We just got back from a camping trip where we spent several days in a tent, surrounded by redwood trees. It’s easy to forget there’s a world outside our computer monitor sometimes, a world with only the noise of water dripping onto leaves and gentle breezes, a world that isn’t divided into pixels and margins. It’s important, sometimes, to take a step away from the blue haze of our monitors and step into the real world just to keep our own sanity.

Last month’s wallpaper(s) seemed to be a hit, so I decided to do another one in the same vein.  The zip file includes high quality widescreen, standard screen, iPhone and iPad wallpapers in the following resolutions:

Widescreen
1920×1200
1440×900
1280×800

Standard
1600×1200
1280×960
1152×864

iPad
768×1024

iPhone
320×480

Download Meditation 7.12MB
downloaded 31 times

This is a collection of 17 high resolution nature and wood textures from a beautiful part of Big Cottonwood Canyon, UT.  We focussed on wood and other nature textures in this pack and will release a texture pack full of rock textures next month.  Click on the thumbnails below to take a look at the images included in this pack and let us know what you think in the comments!

All our textures are released under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Share-Alike license. Click the license badge below for more information about usage.

Arcane Palette textures by Arcane Palette Creative Design is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.arcanepalette.com.

To download this pack, click the link underneath the previews below.

Download AP-BigCottonwoodUT 39.62MB
downloaded 199 times

Yesterday we released our fifth Museum Theme, Ex Libris.  If you’re reading this today (August 4, 2010), there’s still time to get $10 of the purchase price with the coupon code ‘exlibris’ (no quotes).

Ex Libris was designed for typophiles and writers, putting the focus on type and content rather than graphics and bells and whistles.  Everything about the theme was done with readability in mind, from the background color to the font size, but we also added some of our own creative flair to give it a bit of minimalist edginess.  We used fonts from the reputable exljbris font foundry, which also inspired the name of the WordPress theme.  We’re excited about the powerful type controls we’ve added to the options page, allowing users to have full control over the typefaces and font families used on their site.

View Ex Libris demo site
Purchase Ex Libris ($60)

I’ve been playing with various photographic effects and grunging them up for the new jazzsequence.com design, particularly the headers and post thumbnails.  So, it was with those techniques at my fingertips and on my mind that I approached these two wood textures from an upcoming texture pack to create this month’s wallpaper.  And since we were having so much fun, we created two wallpapers this month.

Each wallpaper comes in calendar, non-calendar, Twitter, iPad and iPhone variations in the following sizes:

Widescreen
1920×1200
1680×1050
1440×900

Standard
1600×1200
1280×960
1152×864

iPad
768×1024

iPhone
320×480

Twitter
1920×1200 (optimized to <800k)

Download August Deadwood 23.84MB
downloaded 413 times
Mirror site (customize.org)

This Blogger template, Striking Resemblance, uses real cloth textures and objects to create a lovely backdrop to your blog. It’s a little bit antique, a little bit modern and completely full of charm. Striking Resemblance uses a rich palette of turqoise and fuschias to lend invitation to the luxurious knit and woven textures and uses antique jewelry, ribbon and buttons to accent the design. Designed at the height of summer, I was drawn to the textures of comfort and decorations reminiscent of my childhood. The buttons, especially were a personal touch for me, as a favorite summer pastime was emptying my mom’s bag of buttons and combing through them for forgotten treasures.

Buy Striking Resemblance — $15

This is a texture pack of high-quality images of interesting nature textures.  This set continues where our last one left off, adding dirt, wood, vines and leaves to your arsenal. All our textures are released under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Share-Alike license. Click the license badge below for more information about usage.

Arcane Palette textures by Arcane Palette Creative Design is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.arcanepalette.com.

To download this pack, click the link underneath the previews below.

Download APnature-textures2 0 B
downloaded 203 times

The ancient city of Gilmel, bordered on three sides by the great river Nazarel, was lost in the battle of Harper’s Point.  Gilmel — once the thriving cradle of civilization — was fortified on all sides by walls 30 feet high and twice as thick.  Even that, however, could not stop the Samsen army from laying waste to the city.  The siege lasted 3 weeks, and when the walls came tumbling down,  the great stone gargoyles smashed and shattered in the streets, most of the civilians fled up-river to the nearby city of Oreh…

The concept behind this month’s wallpaper was a mythical city, ancient, rich with culture and art, remembered in its architecture and ruins.  Anyone who’s been to Europe can appreciate the reverence you feel when looking at the remains of a former city, imagining what the city might have looked like hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, what the people and the culture was like.  That feeling of reverence is what we were going for when we designed this wallpaper.

This month, we have calendar and non-calendar versions as well as a Twitter background in the following resolutions:

Widescreen
1920×1200
1680×1050
1440×900

Fullscreen
1600×1200
1280×960
1024×768

Twitter
1920×1200

Download Gilmel: The Lost Empire 127984.3 GB
downloaded 177 times

It’s almost the Fourth of July.  In addition to barbecues, dry heat, and celebrating our country’s independence from Britain 234 years ago, that means it’s almost time to blow stuff up! Here’s a Blogger template that you can gather your lighters, non-flammable clothing and sparklers to.  This particular Blogger template uses a custom font call to enable a unique font in the header and aged textures for the stars and stripes in the background, giving the theme a “faded glory” look.  Whether you’re celebrating the Fourth or just showing your pride, this template is for you!

Download Stars n’ Stripes

If you’ve been following us on Twitter or Facebook, you will have undoubtedly heard us talking about our new Museum Themes — unique, fine art WordPress themes.  We’ve spent months planning, designing, and coding these babies, and we’re excited for the official launch.  Head over to www.museumthemes.com and read the official release announcement.  Today only we’re offering a $5 promo on all our themes if you enter the code gallery-opening during checkout.  If you’re following us on Facebook or Twitter, well, we have an even better deal for you there.  Check it out, and spread the word!

This texture pack is a hodge-podge of random objects and textures that have the common theme that they were all taken from an old house.  Screens, mesh, old fabric, vintage wallpapers and retro-tastic heating vents to add to your collection.  All images were taken at 2272×1704, large enough to do pretty much whatever you want.  If you like these, you should check out our first miscellaneous textures pack.

All our textures are released under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Share-Alike license. Click the license badge below for more information about usage.

Arcane Palette textures by Arcane Palette Creative Design is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.arcanepalette.com.

To download this pack, click the link underneath the previews below.

Download APmisc-textures2 231593.4 GB
downloaded 152 times