What is my story? What does define my design?

I learnt a lot from the sessions I went to at Britmums Live this weekend, from defining my blog design to styling up my photos. These were my favourite sessions and the parts of the weekend where I went into full study mode (geek glasses on). They had very thought provoking presentations, what else do you expect from two very amazing ladies. The nicest woman on the planet, Lucy Heath and a new face to me, Katy Orme who was also very lovely. 

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Define your design with Lucy, @capturebylucy, discussed branding and how to think about your blog design. I do believe with my blog I have my little brand! This weekend only proved it, for example people didn’t really  recognise my face, nor my name on my name badge, but when they saw my logo on my business card they instantly knew who I was. Or they were just very good at acting. So I’d like to think my logo has done its job in that respect. But in terms of looking at my blog layout, my sidebars and making sure that my readers can focus on what they need to. Oh and one major thing I am guilty of is putting text in-between photos in blog posts. A big no no from now on.

In terms of my content on my blog, my moodboard: what is my story? Well that’s an easy one to answer and another that I answered a lot this weekend. I am a lover of lots of things, some say a lover of all things but I’m not a master in any of them.  My blog, in a sense, reflects that. I love baking, I love crafts, I love music, I love photography, I love my friends, I love fashion, I love beauty, I love adventures, I love technology and fixing things, I love travelling and most of all I love my family. I started my blog as a pregnancy journal,  6 years ago now and over the years my blog has covered all of these things that I love. And why shouldn’t it? Yes, I am never going to be classed as a food blogger for a craft brother or interior designer, but I write about the things that I love. The one thing I have learnt this weekend, is that I should not shy away from this. I am not going to steer the direction of my blog, down a particular path, because that’s what other people do. I want to write about the things I love, my story.  I am predominantly a family blogger with a load of lifestyle things along the way, and that is probably where it will stay forever. But I will always write about the things that I love. I found this beautiful postcard in paperchase en route home which really does sum up what I thought about most this weekend and it will be going into a moodboard which I am working on. Thanks for the inspiration Lucy. 

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The things I learnt in the styling up your photo presentation by Katy, @aptapothecary, are a lot of technical things to do with taking photos and making photos look appealing to my readers and my followers. This was all amazing information, especially because most of the bloggers that I follow on Instagram and Pinterest have amazing photos – I want to have those amazing photos too. Having ambitions like this means it drives me to want to learn, to want to be better and want to inspire others too. Katy’s photos are perfectly positioned, thought about for quite some time before the photo is taken. Maybe even styled up the night before. The message was to think about what your style is and stick to it. Now my Instagram feed is a lot of photos that I take for styling reasons, or creative reasons but quite a few photos are just iPhone snapshots of life with the kids. So I have a balance of ordinary moments captured and then styled up photos. I would say that my style, when I try, is bright. I love brightness. I tend not to use filters on Instagram anymore, I just make photos bright. I love over exposed photos. When I did the wedding photography, I love the really bright and over exposed photos – they just looked amazing.  

These are some of the things that I learnt in these workshops. I will be making use of the inspiration. I will be pushing myself to do better. To write things that I want to write about. That was the final thing I took away with me from the weekend. Listening to the blogger keynotes at the end of the second day – the inspiring blog posts, the sadness, the funny one liners, the stories, the truths. The blog posts read out were all bloggers stories, truthful and heartfelt blog posts. It really inspired me to do what I love – write my own stories. I spend far too much time blogging about random things and not the things I actually love, or my thoughts, brain dumping some might say. So that is something that is going to change and this is the first post of that kind. Thank you Britmums for an incredible weekend. One I will never forget. 

This is my story.