If you visit the Sweetest Whimsy website (and I hope you do), you may notice that it's a bit topsy-turvy in the next few days (probably weeks). I am in the process of watermarking my original photos of my cakes in the Cake Gallery and some of the products I sell with a prominent 'Sweetest Whimsy©.' Why do I have to do this? Earlier this year, I discovered, while randomly surfing the web for something totally unrelated, that one of my photos of my own cake was on someone elses's website! It was really strange and slightly unnerving. Then it kind of made me mad.
So I sent a polite but firm email to the owner of the site (it was a blog), and requested that proper credit be given to my photo if they continued to use it. Otherwise . . . they just needed to get it off their site ASAP. They were very nice about it and gave me full credit for my photo.
Thus the Herculean project of removing all the photos from my site, watermarking them, and then uploading them all once again. Eeek. I've been working on the watermarking with some cool software I got online which has made the process somewhat easier (after I spent about an hour figuring out the software).
And while I'm updating all the photos, I'll be updating the website in general. Sadly, many of the items for sale are no longer available from the vendors I've worked with! The retail world is a fickle place.
And then when I've finished that project, all the blog photos will be watermarked as well. Because my stuff is MY STUFF. Intellectual property rights, blah, blah, blah. If someone wants to "borrow" an idea or two from me, that's great, because I do the same and what goes around comes around if we're all honest and polite about it. Call it "friendly cakelifting", if you will. But I do need to protect my work so that this doesn't happen again.
Thanks for your patience, if you visit my site. I am, as always, still open for business and ready to answer any questions. Look for the new and improved Sweetest Whimsy soon!
