Picnik’s very own Community Liaison in Charge of Flickr Operations, Brenda, has knocked up an excellent video tutorial of Effect Painting for the Picnikers group on Flickr. For those of you not regular contributors to the Picnikers Flickr Group (and if not, why not? There’s prizes to be had!), Brenda’s an American-in-New Zealand photography enthusiast with three kids, a gazillion photo sets, and an uncanny knack for harnessing the power of Flickr’s new video tool thingie. In fact she’s so good at this newfangled technology, we just had to post this here, too:

And of course this technique can be used on any of Picnik’s effects with the little icon!

Sure, Team Picnik is freezing through a drizzly and overcast Seattle May, and perhaps we’re more disgruntled about “Climate Change” than any “Global Warming” as such, but we’re still keen stewards of the environment here at Picnik, and wanted to express our enthusiasm for National Bike to Work Week (starting today the 12th to Friday the 16th). Of course, it’s easy for us to be enthusiastic, since of Team Picnik, 80% of us regularly walk, take public transport, drive a bio-diesel powered vehicle, or telecommute, and 7% — Brian — bicycles. As for the rest of us biking to work this month, well, Seattle’s a bit on the hilly side, and some of us would rather let the bus do all the work as we cheer Brian on from within the cozy embrace of Sound Transit.

Anyway, it’s cold outside.

But for those of you living in flatter, more thigh-friendly regions, we’d like to encourage you to take this opportunity to leave the car in the garage, tell your carpool to figure something else out, and feel the wind in your hair (or helmet — Picnik promotes safe riding!) during this week’s commute. For those of you for whom biking to work just isn’t feasible, or if you suffer the effects of Climate Change as much as we do, perhaps you can live the spirit of the week by using Picnik to edit and send a Picnik-powered egreeting! With no dead trees, no air miles, and a carbon footprint only as wide as the amount power you use to run your computer (which of course would be on anyway), using Picnik to edit your photos, apply awesome effects, personalize it with fantastic fonts, shapes and frames, and then email it off to anyone in the world (and try bicycling there, eh?) is truly an environmentally friendly way to share your fabulous photos.

Meanwhile, and maybe it’s just that Seattle is sunnier today, but several members of Team Picnik leaned their bikes up along side Brian’s today. Well done, everybody, and let’s hope the weather keeps on warming!

Forget all the stress of cheesy greeting cards and too-slow postal travel times by making your favorite mom (or moms, or grandmoms, or favored aunt, or particularly maternal father) her (or their, or his) very own personalized, hand-made Mother’s Day greeting with our new selection of Mother’s Day shapes!

Whether a delicate bouquet of flowers or a super-bad tattoo on your arm declaring your devotion, just add a little text with your own personal message and sit back and wait for her (or their, or his) eyes to well up in misty gratitude.

Because, admit it, the ones you make yourself are more meaningful anyway.

Team Picnik wants to congratulate Photobucket on the launch of their new Open API, and we’re thrilled to be right there with them as an official launch partner!

Now any developer can create an application to seamlessly bridge with Photobucket for simple, secure access to photo albums. For instance, all five billion, one hundred thirty four million, four hundred thirty thousand, one hundred thirty nine (and counting!) photos on the internet’s biggest photo storage site can be seamlessly accessed, made perfect with our editing tools, made awesome with our special effects, shapes, and text, plus put in customized frames, then saved them back to Photobucket without ever leaving Picnik.

We here at Picnik are always looking for easy and fun ways to make perfect photos and want to thank Photobucket for helping us bring that ease and fun to as many people as possible, and we wish all you Photobucket users out there happy Picniking!

Why settle for just having hilarious cats on your t-shirt\mug\canvas prints? Wouldn’t your awesome Picniked photo be so much better? We think so! Picnik has partnered-up with the clever QOOP (cue-oop!), allowing you to shoot your creation straight to QOOP and direct to your new mouse pad. You ask, “Dude, where and how?!?” Under the Save&Share tab you’ll see Print Photo… then all the cool QOOP options. Clicking one of their options (prints, postcards, key chains, disks, calendars, more, more) will deliver you to QOOP with your current open picture (and your Photo History… coming soon!).

Not one to rest on any single project at a time, we also decided to go international in a big way becoming PhotoBox.com’s new killer photo-editor. Completing their picture (sorry) with storage, sharing, publishing and lots of other photo-coolness. If you’re just about anywhere in Europe, you’ve got to have heard of these sharp guys: Photobox.fr in France, Photobox.de in Germany and Photobox.co.uk. Picnik runs in those languages too, but you already knew that. Finally, hold on to your hat\hut\chapeau\capello for their coming releases all across Europe!

We are thrilled to announce that Picnik and Peter Roman (Picnik designer and all around nice guy) have won the prestigious I.D. Magazine 2008 Annual Design Review in the Interactive category! Yeah! We’ve known for a long time that Peter and the rest of the team sport some mad design skills, and now it’s official.

Who are these ID Mag folks anyway? It just so happens that in the world of international design, these guys really know their stuff. ID Magazine has been running this annual juried competition now for over 50 years. That means that a panel of expert designers tapped Picnik to be the winner in our category from over 2000 entries overall. And we’re in great company, as two of our faves also won: Apple’s iPhone and Seattle’s own Olympic Sculpture Park brought home ID 2008 honors. The awards will be published in the July/August edition of I.D. Magazine.

In an semi-related matter, Picnik is looking for another Designer to join our team. Please send your resume to contact@picnik.com.

p.s. Traffic is up a whopping 55% this month - it’s not just the ID mag folk who are digging on Picnik!

Given the fanatical font geekery here at Picnik World HQ, we’re thrilled to finally announce that we’ve unveiled our brand new and exclusive offering of 15 fonts from FontShop®, available only to Premium Picnikers. This collection of typefaces from the FontFont® library was hand-picked just for our users and represents an incredible selection of truly professional, quality fonts. In fact, if you want to use these fonts without the incredibly affordable Picnik Premium membership, you’ll be paying thousands of dollars. No joke, they’re that awesome.

So, without further ado, here’s the list:

FF DIN - Cool, crisp, minimal. Albert Jan-Pool’s skillful reworking of the official traffic type of Germany (DIN stands for Deutsches Institut für Normung, or “German Institute for Standardisation”) will work in any setting, and has been used on ABC’s World News With Charles Gibson, MTV Latin America, JetBlue Airways, and Adidas.

FF Meta - Erik Spiekermann’s humanist typeface is considered by many to be groundbreaking, and the most influential sans serif of the digital age. Designed to be readable and sturdy on a small scale (it was intended for Deutsche Bundespost, to be easily legible on postage stamp scale) and in large letters (or on a mail truck), it can be used for a look that’s both modern and approachable, as has the Stockholm Metro, Imperial College London, Environment Agency of England and Wales, and I.D. Magazine.

FF Meta Serif - It took three years and three designers to create this sturdy serif companion to Spiekermann’s FF Meta. Ideal for a classic look or longer passages of text.

FF Tartine Script - This natural, flowing script drawn by Parisian font designer Xavier Dupré is at home on both greeting cards and cans of gourmet soup.

FF Erikrighthand - The handwriting of Dutch designer Erik van Blokland is bold and legible and yours to pretend ownership of!

FF Pepe - Give your images a vintage, personal touch with the elegant award-winning script by Spanish designer Pepe Gimeno.

FF Brokenscript - Get in touch with your inner Berliner with Just van Rossum’s interpretation of old German type. Known as a “textura blackletter”, FontShoppers might affectionately call it “heavy metal”.

FF Market - H. A. Simon’s script is the kind of casual freestyle lettering you’d see price-pointing produce or refrigerator markdowns.

FF Providence Sans - The basic print letters of a child are often the most human and legible. Drawn with youthful care by Guy Jeffrey Nelson.

FF Oxide - The letters found on shipping containers, warehouse walls, and military munitions can now be found on your pics, thanks to celebrated New York designer Christian Schwartz.

FF Cocon - Curvaceous and organic, the type of Dutch designer Evert Bloemsma has become synonymous with “Web 2.0″.

FF Marker - Legit graffiti can’t be made with a font, but Thomas Marecki’s typeface from FF Tag Team gets you pretty darn close.

FF Confidential - Just van Rossum’s deliciously damaged homage to industrial typography, FF Confidential is good for advertising, displays, or flyers for anarchist organisations.

So check them all out, and let us know what you think!

Easter’s come early this year, but we’re on top of things with a whole slew of shapes to help you photographically celebrate this happy and festive spring day! There are Easter lilies and chocolate rabbits, Easter eggs and the chickens that laid them, and everything else you’d need to embellish your Easter Egg Hunt, Easter Basket Opening, Easter Brunch, kids dressed in their Easter Sunday Best, or anything else that could be improved with jelly beans and peace doves.

It’s true: Picnik is now on MySpace! All kajillion MySpace users can now access photo-editing superstarpowers at myspace.com/getpicnik. And stay tuned, we’ve got some special MySpace-only features cookin’ in the oven.

Don’t forget to add us as a friend!

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day (and the fact that this past weekend was our biggest ever, smashing the record for our previous biggest weekend ever), Picnik’s gone from grass green to kelly green! We’ve got everything Oirish in our Shapes: shamrocks, flags, pots of gold, rainbows, harps, hats, and of course, everyone’s favorite perfect pint.

And don’t forget to click on our green-like-the-hills-o’-Ireland link to vote for your very favorite web-based photo-editor in the Publishing & Photography category for the Webware 100!

Now we’ve done all that with plenty of time to get down the pub. Pionta Guinness le do thiol!

(That means “Pint of Guinness, please!”)