Thursday, October 30, 2008

Sale! All Latin and English Altar Cards only $29.00

Hello everyone. Now, that we are entering the Christmas Season, we have decided to offer you all of our standard 12 inch unframed Latin and English Altar Cards at only $29.00 per set! That's $20.00 off our standard, $49.00 price structure.

We believe that in this current economic downturn, all businesses need to give consumers price breaks in order for everyone to benefit. It is good for the public and it is good for business. Whether you need Latin or English, traditional or large print, we have several styles of unframed altar cards designed especially to be easy to read and practical.

Our regular business website is located at www.myriadcreativeconcepts.com. To view our catalog, click here.

If there is anything we can do for you, just let us know. Thank you for considering us for your altar cards. We hope to hear from you soon.




Thursday, October 16, 2008

"Roman Pillars" Tridentine High Mass Latin Altar Cards Now Available

Hello everyone. In response to a recent designing request for Roman Catholic Tridentine HIGH Mass Latin Altar Cards, we now offer two versions for your consideration: "Vintage Diamond" Solemn High Mass Altar Cards and "Roman Pillars" Solemn High Mass Altar Cards.

Just yesterday, we put the finishing touches on our new "Roman Pillars" Solemn High Mass Altar Cards. This version is modeled after historic Roman Catholic altar cards from the early 20th Century. Using modern computer-enhanced typesetting technology, we have typeset crisp, easy to read Latin prayers in a traditional layout conforming to the 1962 Roman Missal. The type is much smaller than most of our other work, only about 11 points, but small type was common on antique cards that had elaborate artwork. For anyone with great eyesight desiring altar cards reminiscent of beautiful vintage cards, "Roman Pillars" may be ideal for your needs.

"Roman Pillars" can be used for the Traditional High or Low Latin Mass. They include the Incensing Prayers and we've put them in the standard place of lower center column. Like our other versions, the standard dimensions are as follows: one 12 x 18 inch center card with two, 12 x 8 side cards. They arrive ready for you to take to a professional framing shop or lamination company. And, like our other standard sized cards, they are priced at only $49.00 per set plus shipping and handling.

Please note that all of our Mass Cards are available for downloading at half the cost of printed and shipped Mass Cards. And, smaller travel sizes are available. See our Catalog for details.

For more information or to place an order, just send us an email or visit our regular business website located at www.myriadcreativeconcepts.com. And, as always, if you have a special project or specific artwork in mind, please let us know so that we may be able to custom-design for you.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

2008 Financial Crisis Prayer

Hello everyone. This morning, as I prepare to face the world, get the news, and do a good day's work, I would just like to begin it with a prayer for you and all of us:

O God, Maker of all things past and present and future, may your continuing peace be evident in our hearts and minds today. We fear the future because we know too much. We fear our fellow man because we have seen too much. Hopelessness and despair are always at our doorstep vying for our attention. Things just don't seem to be getting any better, God.

We are scared, O God. We are scared.

So, we put our faith in You. We trust and rest only in you, Lord.

And, walk this world another day.


Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Vesting Prayers, Prayers At The Foot Of The Altar and Prayers After Low Mass

Hello everyone. Now that my customer's custom-designed High Mass Altar Cards are being printed, I thought that this would be a good time to point out the supplemental Latin Mass Cards that we offer for the Roman Catholic Tridentine Mass. Those of you who are unfamiliar with the Latin Mass may not be aware that there are several more Mass cards that priests use to celebrate Mass with.

A priest preparing to celebrate the 1,500 year-old Tridentine Mass is akin to a surgeon preparing for surgery on a very important patient is how I picture him.

The celebrating priest takes his responsibility very, very seriously. He prepares himself beforehand in the Sacristy by saying special Hand Washing Prayers. (We have made index card sized Hand Washing Prayers but they are also included on Vesting Prayer Cards.) Then, as he puts his robes on, he says special Vesting Prayers. Pictured here are our red Vesting Prayers which have Latin on one side and English on the other. We also have designed them in blue.

Leaving the Sacristy and approaching the altar with his server(s), the priest and server say the Prayers At The Foot Of The Altar. Remember, the Tridentine is very structured and steeped in tradition. It is truly beautiful. Pictured on the right is our Latin version. By request, we recently designed an English version too.

Please forgive me if I am not explaining this very well. I am a mere layman. Only a priest could really tell this story well.

Anyway, next, the altar cards kick in. The three altar cards have specific prayers on them and recited in a certain order. We have available High Mass Altar Cards (when a priest uses incense), Low Mass Altar Cards (most daily and Sunday use), and Requiem Altar Cards for funerals.

After Mass, and, I'm a little unsure here, but, at least sometimes, priests use the Benediction Prayers. I don't know if they use them all of the time. Although we have designed some, to date no one has requested them.

Next, the priest says the Prayers After Low Mass, also known as the Leonine Prayers after Pope Leo XIII. The Leonine Prayers are very lovely. As I've entered the texts and read them, they are very touching and special. I especially like the short version prayer to St Michael The Archangel. I liked it so much that I researched and found the long version and have made a print of it available.

That's the gist of it from this unknowledgeable layman. I am so unskilled that I can't even read Latin. But, at least you have a bit of an overview. For anyone who would like more information, I'm sure that there are priests near you who would love to share with you some of the intricacies of the Latin Mass.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Altar Cards For the Latin High Mass Coming Soon


Hello everyone. Latin Altar Cards for the Roman Catholic Tridentine Solemn High Mass will be available to you for purchase by mid-October, 2008. "Vintage Diamond High Mass Altar Cards" are being modeled after the traditional artwork of our "Vintage Diamond Low Mass Altar Cards" and merely need tweaking and proofread before public release.

Like our large print altar cards, these too are being fashioned after a priest called to request us to design them. He shall remain anonymous until we have permission to publish his name.

This set features all of the prayers of the Low Mass but also includes the High Mass Incensing Prayers in their traditional place at the lower half of the center column.

Advance orders are being taken now as we get ready to go to print. If interested, please see our catalog or business website for ordering instructions.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

"Wall" Of Pictures Of Our Latin And English Altar Cards

Hello everyone. Today's post features our Cooliris PicLens embedded wall of our Altar Cards Gallery directly piped from our mass cards business website at www.myriadcreativeconcepts.com and tips to anyone wishing to do the same thing with their website or blog pictures. Of course, our pictures can also be viewed in our Catalog.

It isn't that hard to do. If you would like to embed a PicLens wall on your site, I might not be of much help, but I will try to answer your questions. The one thing I almost forgot to do is to optimize the page for search engines by adding title, key words, description, and meta tags. The pictures themselves are named well and contain hyphens between words so that should help them be found by Google and the others.

Download PicLens Publisher to make most of it rather painless. Publisher creates a Media RSS feed of your pictures and that allows the pictures to "stream" in viewers' browsers. A secondary benefit of having one's pictures in Media RSS form is that you can set up a SiteMeter account for the stream and track your statistics. Another benefit, probably more important, is that the RSS stream that you created is now available to RSS Readers. By adding your own feed to Google Reader, My Yahoo. and My Aol, that ensures that those three major search engines are aware of your feed, that it transmits properly, and others can subscribe to it. That subscription feature is cool because as your Gallery changes with new pictures, your subscribers will be kept up to date of those changes.

So, if you are a graphic artist or a photographer, you may want to consider adding a Cooliris PicLens wall to at least one of your website pages to experiment with. That's it for today. I'll see you all next time. I hope you like my "wall." It looks pretty crude in this particular Blogger template but at least it works. :)

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Our Altar Cards Website Is Up And Running!


Hello everyone. Today is an exciting day for us because our brand new business website is now "Live" on the web for you at: www.myriadcreativeconcepts.com. Since March of 2008, we have used this Blogger blog, "Altar Card Artistry," to showcase our altar cards and Mass cards for your consideration. However, now that we have an easy to navigate business website up and running, you will find it much easier to navigate our new site there to find the Latin and English altar cards you need to say Mass with. This blog is still vitally important to us because it is our "voice" and we hope you will still frequent this blog from time to time.

For your convenience, this Catalog link links to our catalog on our business site. To view larger pictures of the altar cards merely click the names under the cards. If you have any problems or questions, we also have a comments section to address those issues.

There are so many that I would like to thank for this milestone: My girlfriend, my family, my priest, and so many others who have given me such wonderful support.

And, of course, the many priests and nuns who have been so kind as to buy our altar cards and been so very supportive. Thanks to you all.

No matter if you are looking for antique looking altar cards, Latin, English, travel sized altar cards, large print, or Mass cards like Vesting Prayers or Prayers At The Foot Of The Altar or Prayers After Low Mass (Leonine Prayers), we have them in stock and ready to go. and even offer downloadable altar cards. Plus, if we do not have what you are looking for, we will help you find those that you prefer.

Thanks everyone for your support these past several months. I have much more work to do so I'd better close for now. Take care and I'll see you next time here.





Saturday, October 4, 2008

Website Design: Ten Tips From A Newbie

Hello everyone. As a newbie at building a website, I'm going to dare offer 10 tips that you may not have heard yet.

First, trust your own intuition. Geez, everyone out there is a know-it-all about designing a site. As for me, I am trying to keep mine very simple and uncomplicated.

Second, know that your girlfriend probably has a better eye for what "looks" good than you do. My girlfriend's input has been invaluable. My title banner looked fine to me but horrible to her. My buttons (which are a royal pain to make) looked great to me, but horrible to her...

Gulp.

Alas, swallowing my pride, I yielded to her aesthetic wisdom, listened, and changed them. And, I'm glad I did because they do indeed look much better.

Third, Macromedia Flash and Fireworks are not what they are cracked up to be. Sure, they are all the rage in web design of glitsy sites. But, something told me to avoid them whenever possible. After all, if a site is worthy, why does one need a bunch of "glitter?" Somehow, I can't picture my visitors as being the types who would want a bunch of slideshows, flash animations, and all of that jazz. They just want to find some great altar cards is all.

Still discussing point three, I wanted fancy Flash or Fireworks buttons. They are hyped to make things better for the visitor. But, if someone doesn't have a Flash enabled browser, they couldn't use the buttons to navigate the site!! Doh. So, I found a workaround method: Use Adobe InDesign to create the buttons, then, using Fireworks, I added the words to them. Then, exported to Macromedia Dreamweaver, I used Dreamweaver's ability to make a Navigation Bar with the buttons. My visitors will still have to enable Active X, unfortunately, but that's not nearly so scary for many people as Flash is. The important thing is that the buttons can still be viewed and used even if my visitors don't enable Active X.

Point Four and maybe the most important tip that I have read: when naming files for use in a site, use hyphens instead of underscores. Search engines, especially Google can tell what a file contains if hyphens are used. An example: large-print-altar-cards-image.jpg.

Fifth, the name of the web page is vital in rating high in search results.

Sixth, without content, i.e. something worthy of reading or shopping for - forget about success.

Seventh, make links open in a new window so that your visitors don't lose track of where your site is. To open links in new windows, choose "Blank" in a Target's choices Dreamweaver.

Eighth, use PayPal for transactions. No mess, no fuss. I sure don't want my customer's credit card numbers stored on my site. God forbid that they should get stolen somehow. With PayPal storing that information instead of me, I can sleep much better at night.

Ninth, don't build a site full of pictures. Store them in the available online photo gallery sites like Picasa Web Albums and Flickr. Just link to them. That keeps your site size nice and small.

Tenth, always keep in mind that one's visitors are most important. If your site is worth visiting, easy to navigate, and improves the lives of your visitors, then, by all means, keep doing what is right and working. Otherwise, throw it out of the window and start all over again!

That's just some observations of this web site beginner designer. It has been overwhelming but well worth the effort. And, I have much to learn still ...



Thursday, October 2, 2008

Our Upcoming Official Business Website: http://www.myriadcreativeconcepts.com

Hello everyone. Soon, I will be launching the official business website of Myriad Creative Concepts to make it much easier for you to find the altar cards you may be looking for. This blog has been our online business and blogging presence but it is too confusing for many of you. I apologize to any who have found navigating "Altar Card Artistry!" to be too difficult.

Our online business will be located at http://www.myriadcreativeconcepts.com, I think. I'm not sure if the web hosting company will use the "www" or not.

Browsing our catalog selections, ordering, returns, and the rest will be a piece of cake for you. The catalog will have links to large pictures of our designs for your review. I expect the new website to be launched by November of 2008.

This blog has been a fantastic experience and will be maintained and continue to be our "voice." I have enjoyed writing posts about a variety of things and hope that you will still stop in once in a while to see what we've been up to, what serendipitous experiences we're having, and what we have found others out there are up to that may be of interest to you.

Until our easy to navigate business site is up and running, please email me if you are having difficulty examining our altar cards on Picasa Web Albums. A catalog can be easily emailed to you so that you can find what you are looking for: downloadable altar cards, Latin altar cards, English altar cards, free altar cards, Vesting Prayers, or Prayers At The Foot Of The Altar. Plus, lots more.

Now, I've got a website to finish building. Enjoy your day!