Squidoo's Rocket Moms

Session 3 of Squidoo’s Rocket Moms ended yesterday and, as far as I know, everybody managed to do the eight lenses to graduate and earn their Rocket Moms graduation badge.

The session lasted for eight weeks and the requirement for graduation was to make eight lenses that fitted the weekly assignment. The assignment was only disclosed on Sunday of each week so that gave us seven days to complete it. Of course, Squidoo is a part time activity for most people and things happen in their lives which sometimes mean they don’t have the time to finish a lens in a week but a member can still graduate as long as she has completed eight lenses by the end of the session.

I found most of the assignments challenging because they took me out of my comfort zone.  The very first assignment, to write about a favourite toy, nearly made me give up immediately. I couldn’t imagine writing about a toy. It took me several days to come up with an idea and the lens, Meccano – One of my Favourite Toys. I really did love playing with my brother’s Meccano set but it was a long time ago so I found it difficult to write.  I must have done OK, though, because it was given a Purple Star.

Crazy Quilts with a Difference

Another assignment that took me a while to decide upon a topic was Your Favourite Decade. The good news was it didn’t have to be a decade we had lived through so I did the 1940s concentrating on Make Do and Mend. That got a Purple Star too as did Crazy Quilts with a Difference in response to the Arts and Crafts assignment.

The funny thing is that these were all the assignments I found most difficult and least wanted to write. Perhaps the fact that I had to work harder on them is what made the difference. I also spent more time thinking about them before I wrote anything at all.

The Rocket Moms experience has been totally positive in spite of my occasional panics each time a new assignment was put in the RM forum. The tutorials put in the forum each week have been enormously helpful too by introducing me to ideas and ways of working I’d never come across before.

I would heartily recommend Rocket Moms to anybody who qualifies – the basic requirements are that you are a Mom (or Mum if you’re English like me) and you’re a member of Squidoo. If you want to learn more about building lenses (web pages) in a supportive environment with a great community, I’d suggest you check it out.

Art and Design Group

I run an Art and Design Group on Squidoo. I clearly set out the criteria for membership right at the top of the page. A lens must have relevant content and not be just copied from Wikipedia and it should be well illustrated.  It mustn’t be just a prolonged plug  for a Clickbank product.

This doesn’t seem difficult to understand but so many people either don’t understand or they don’t bother to read the criteria.

Over the last week I’ve looked at about a dozen lenses that have applied to join the group. Most of them had very little or nothing at all to do with art or design. The lensmasters  must have thought that, because they had some pictures on them, they automatically qualified. Others were just plugging their Zazzle stores where they were selling stuff with designs they had done themselves. In some cases, this would be fair enough. Unfortunately, the ones I’ve seen recently have all been very derivative. They have also done two or three designs, then shown what seems like an endless list of products, all using these same few designs on them.

Having said all that, there are some great lenses in the group. Take a look at this one, Cheryl Craig, Aboriginal Artist to see some great art  by an artist who is descended from the Wiradjuri people in Australia.

Now have a look at these brilliant chess sets, designed and sculpted by Frankie, the lensmaster who has written about them. Then there is The Louvre: Essential, Little Known Tourist Tips which was chosen as Lens of the Day last year. The lensmaster, Margo Arrowsmith, uses her personal experience to give prospective visitors to the Louvre tips for getting the most out of their visit.

There are also several tutorials on different techniques. You can go through step by step instructions on drawing birds complete with detailed feathers using coloured pencils or doing an airbrush drawing of a wolf.

These are just a few of the brilliant lenses in the Art and Design Group. It’s obvious that some people who apply to join, not only do not read the criteria for membership but don’t even bother to check out any of the lenses or they would see that their own were not acceptable.