Jon Walters used the Frame for his wedding photos:

While Yaelfran has used it for her artwork:

Now, let’s get back to the Brain Teaser. It all started when Paul (our product designer) first showed me the design, my brain started to hurt. Why? Well, I kept trying to calculate how many different ways I could put together a set of cards in a frame. I must admit my University Math class was ages ago. So, can you help me out?

The Challenge:
How many different ways can you arrange the cards in the frame given the following:
1. you have 20 different MiniCards
2. each MiniCard looks equally good vertically or horizontally
3. each MiniCard must be included in the frame arrangement only one time

Remember, the frame can also hang vertically or horizontally (perhaps that adds another 2 variations?) Here’s a little video we made to show you how it works. It should give you an idea of how the little frames fit in to the bigger frame…

So, if you think you know the answer, leave your answer and calculations in our comments. Based on collective understanding here at MOO we will pick the winner from the selection of answers we receive by end of week. The winner will receive a Mosaic Frame for free. (Your answer doesn’t have to be right but needs to be well thought out - remember ‘Part Marks’ ). We’ll announce the winner next Monday.
Good Luck!

PS If you want tips on how to put together the frame Paul has provided his expert advice!

Of course, we’d love it if you used our templates for making your cards (like the ones above) - mainly as it took us ages to make them BUT, you don’t have to. We still have the full image upload option, so you could - if you were feeling a bit creative - go nuts with some photos and text in a graphics app first. Look at these:

They were made by Hailey and Andrew, Brisbane based photographers, who fancied doing something cool to send to clients. They made cards with MOO last year too - and not just for themselves. If you check out this blog post, you’ll see they made some great Christmas tags, stickers and Cards for their clients too. (Now the financial pressure’s on a bit, any extra value or services you can provide for you clients, at not too much extra effort has to be a good thing…)

If you need help with templates, images or handy online (free!) graphics applications, we’ve made an ideas page - with links which could help.

In other news, we spotted this beautiful photo by ash-lip in the Flickr pool. Lovely photo, lovely cards - and such a great little improvised stand! GRAPHIC AND ILLUSTRATION STUDENTS try and remember this for next year. If you’re having a degree show, you’re going to need simple ways to display your work - and something future clients can take away and remember you by. (Trust me, I’ve been there.) This does two in one - cheaply.

And finally, thanks to Sheila, the wonderful Mum of MOO’s ace developer Nicky… Look! She made us all bags! They’re modelled here by Alicia and Nicky herself:

Tired of using plastic bags, which wreck the environment and are stupidly wasteful, Sheila made these bags via morsbags.com. Its a nice little resource, with patterns to use and information on how to put the bags together. So not only did we all get a nice little present, but we’re cutting down on plastic bag consumption at the same time. What a very nice way to start the weekend.

Have a good one!

Using the combined power of the We feel fine and MOO Api he’s created 100 Feelings felt. It pulls out the most recent 100 feelings from We feel fine, and creates 100 different MiniCards. It’s a perfect snapshot of time - each MiniCard is printed with a description or emotion on the front, and the name of the feeling on the reverse (happy, sad, angry etc) - along with the date and time the feeling was felt. It’s a wonderful piece of history you can hold in your hands.

These are some cards he created while developing the site:

So, have a break from your news feeds, and see how people really feel.

As promised, today (this hallowed eve) we announce the winners of the MOO Christmas and Holiday Card Caption Competition.

We had a great 12 days of festive images and seasonal messages and it put us thoroughly in the mood for glad tidings, eggnog and presents! Bring on the Holidays, we say.

Thank you all for taking part, coming up with creative captions and getting into the seasonal spirit.

It was a tough job picking the best captions; there were so many great submissions for each image, but we are very pleased with our special limited edition winner’s pack of Christmas and Holiday Cards, which is now on sale here!

We will be contacting the winners with their prizes next week.

And here they are…

IMAGE 1

acwmaiden

“You want me to do WHAT??”

ken wilkinson

“Ok,who added the Santa `Clause` to my contract”?

IMAGE 2

Julian Wolf

And I always thought angels would be kosher.

Happy Holidays anyway!

Monica Gaffney

Peace. Love. Bacon.

IMAGE 3

ollka

Felt, don’t melt!

Casey Palmer
Frosty the snowman knew

The sun was hot that day,

So he said, “Have a Merry Christmastime

Before I melt away.”

IMAGE 4

Heather

Santa’s coming. Pretend you’re asleep.

Dianna

Waiting up for Santa is hard work!

IMAGE 5

sharon

Even santa has felt the effects of the economic downturn…

Marian

Merry Christmas, Deer.

IMAGE 6

Erika

And Vader said unto the Clones, “You too shall have a Christmas bonus.”

Irit

Being the only Jewish stormtrooper certainly has its perks.

IMAGE 7

Kitty

“He was well and truly trapped this time. Hopefully, Rudolph would be able to rescue him before it was too late…”

Lisa

Santa was starting to wonder what kind of kid lived in a glass ball, anyhow…

IMAGE 8

Marti

Have a (snow) ball this Christmas!

Marian

It’s Snow Fun without you. Wish you could be here for Christmas.

IMAGE 9

Fiona

The Smiths knew they’d outdone the whole street this year, and they didn’t care if they blew the National Grid doing it!

Lucy

Maureen wished she had checked that all the bulbs were working before she wound them around the tree.

IMAGE 10

Hazel

Batman immediately recognized Robin at the Christmas Fancy Dress party.

J daniel

On this beautiful Christmas day
I send you a robin chirping all the way,
Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! he’d say
& fill your lives with joyful rays.

IMAGE 11

Becca

May love keep you warm this holiday season.

Dylan Burnett

There’s no business like snow business.
So stow business and lo!
You will witness
A fine Christmas,
With divine hours in the snow!

IMAGE 12

Rebecca

Have a holly jolly Christmas!

Theazy

Berry Christmas!

Next we’re going through all the captions again, to pick out the winners. We’ll be picking two captions per photo (hopefully) and announcing the winners in the blog by the end of the week. Good luck!

—–

In the midst of the excitement of the past few weeks, we’ve also launched a brand new product - Christmas and Holiday Cards! For those of you who haven’t had the chance to check them out, take a look. This year we’ve added templates into the mix, so you can make up to 25 cards using the same template but use a different photo and text on each one.

These are really nice for families keeping in touch with relatives across the globe, or even for businesses, wanting to send a highly personalised message to a client. You can also add your own logo or photo to the reverse of the cards to personalise it even further. There’s quite a range of templates - and you can even ‘upgrade’ your envelopes to red, brown, gold or silver!

At this time of year, as thoughts turns to gifts for friends and loved ones, it’s also good to be able to give to those less fortunate than you. Last year we donated money to MSF, and this year we asked for your help in choosing a charity to support, via sales of Christmas and Holiday Cards. Our newsletter readers voted from a range of international charities, and while it was a close call, the World Society for the Protection of Animals won by a cats whisker. This means for every pack of cards you buy, WSPA will receive £1/$2. Thank to everyone who voted!

And what a festive, fun-filled twelve days it’s been. From bacon angels to dressed up pets, and from stick reindeer to ginormous Christmas trees, we’ve had something for everyone.

Remember that you still have the whole weekend to think of your finest captions yet, so grab a cup of cocoa, put on your favourite knitted woolly jumper and feel the seasonal cheer as you think up some captions for as many of the images as you like.

The winners will be announced on 31st October (Halloween - spooky!) and the limited edition pack containing all the images with the winning captions will also be available to buy.

Our twelfth and final photo was taken by MildlyDiverting.

Have a great weekend!

So this next image is particularly appropriate as we, in the Northern Hemisphere, enter winter-time.

Our eleventh photo was taken by ff137.

And now back to the MOO Christmas and Holiday Card Caption Competition.

Whether you are gearing up to celebrate Christmas or Chanukah or any other upcoming festival, this next image will make a lovely wintery and seasonal Greeting Card.

Our tenth photo was taken by estoril.

How beautiful is that little fella?

Make sure you have had a go at coming up with a caption, on any of the photos we’ve included so far.

If none of the cutesy animals have got your creative juices flowing, perhaps this impressive Christmas Tree will…

Our ninth photo was taken by Iain Farrell.

We only have 5 festive images left for you to comment on, so do make sure you have your ‘creative cap’ on this week to be in with a chance of making it into our limited edition pack.

Remember, we will be choosing our top 2 captions for each image to turn into a special Ready Made pack of Christmas Cards for sale in the lead up to the Holidays.

Our eighth photo was taken by Waldo Jaquith.

How cute is doggy Ado Annie?!