all things texture

I really enjoy this part of the design process. I think for the most part that it's all really beautiful and it reminds me of how much art is in nature.
The sites we were to look at this week were:
1) urban dirty
one of my favorites out of this whole group. I really really enjoyed it and I loved the simple but very effective set-up, layout. Its purpose is clear, which I appreciated. The tagging was easy to use. I spent an obscene amount of time here.
2) best texture flickr group
Not really impressed by this. I find it less interesting on an artistic level, but also, I don't like anything I have to register for. It's just one more thing to keep up with. I do give them credit however for their creativity with the concept and it is really clever that users can sign in and make comments (with the idea being that these will be friends and family). It is an awesome way to stay connected to people.
3) Torley textures
really beautiful. I love the tiling. It shows wonderful creativity! But again, its flickr with all the things that I did not enjoy about that. LOVE the pictures though!! No ads, or anything like that, I can at least say that for flickr.
4) Deviant art textures
gorgeous pictures. Read the creators profile. Don't understand a word of it. At least all the "boring" stuff is at the bottom of the page with the pictures at the top. That's a plus. The ads are not bad, not very invasive. Each of the artists have links under each picture with their "rules" which is both nice and confusing at the same time. I am still unsure about all this material, what exactly you can do what with unless it specifically says, like in urban dirty.
5) Texture king
clever site, no ads in the way, cute little t-shirt and easy updating news sections. Easy to navigate and well layed out. Again, spent a lot of time here and really enjoyed it.
6) Grunge Textures
loved it! I actually followed the link from urban dirty. I can say all the same good things about this site. It's easy to use, well layed out, and, (my favorite) very clear about what you can do with it.
7) Grunge Style
I hate the set-up (scroll down). I had a hard time figuring out what the point of it all was. Not to say that I did not like it, it had a lot of good information on it, but it seemed more like a teaching tool. My other complaint is that for the pictures, there was no description, you had to click on each link, making it very time consuming. And (just to be picky) somewhere in there they were fussing about people having ads on their sites and I just have to point out,,, they have ads on THEIR site!!!!