Showing posts with label createblogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label createblogging. Show all posts

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Tips for Organized Pinterest Boards


Like many bloggers, I really love Pinterest.
  
I once loved Pinterest a lot more than I do now (probably because I'm no longer planning a wedding, and I'm not planning a baby anytime soon), so a lot of what circulates through Pinterest is no longer relevant to me like it used to be or might be in the future. 


Never-the-less, it is a great place to dream and waste time, and also to promote your blog.  I've been using Pinterest to do so for quite a while, but nothing pains me more than how unorganized Pinterest boards can quickly become.


While I had some forced free time (recovering from the flu) I worked on making my Pinterest board names more cohesive by renaming, organizing them by category, deleting unnecessary boards, and keeping with a consistent formula for the titles.
Here are some tips I thought I'd share for any of you looking to clean up your Pinterest account.

TIPS TO GET COHESIVE PINTEREST BOARDS

Board titles are important.



  • Keep with a consistent theme when titling your boards.  Use space and lines to make your board titles feel clean, and keep them as simple as possible while conveying the appropriate category.
  • I set a general theme of naming boards with an initial category, in this case "home."  In all my board titles, I used lowercase letters to keep the titles all at one height, and added a space between each letter in the initial category.  For example:  h o m e
  • Between the initial category, I broke other boards into sub-categories.  I separated most of the categories with two forward slashes.  For example:  h o m e  //  kitchen + dining
  • Remember, when naming your boards that Pinterest organized the drop down list alphabetically.  So when you are browsing home pins, and first you pin a kitchen, but now you're pinning a bathroom, if you do not preface the board name with "home" then the location of the board in the drop down list is drastically different.  This is why I prefaced my board names with categories.


Keep your favorites or the most important boards toward the top.

  • This is especially important if you are primarily using Pinterest as a business or blog.  Keep the boards that relate most to your content (not necessarily boards with JUST your content) at the top.  So if you are a home decor and DIY blogger, then put those boards in the first two rows.  If you're a food blogger, put recipe boards at the top.  If you don't blog, but just want to organize your account, put the boards that best represent your interests at the top.
  • Some bloggers and businesses may have a separate account for their business than for personal use.  I don't promote my own blog on Pinterest enough to feel the need to separate the accounts, so I wanted to make my account look more geared for my blog, but still keep my personal boards on there.  I opted to keep the personal boards at the bottom, and my more blog related boards at the top.


Board cover photos can help tell the story of your board, and good photography helps.


  • When choosing board covers, choose colors that relay the type of board this is.  A good example I have from my boards is for d i y // projects and d i y // crafts.  One might not know how to differentiate between these boards, however my board covers makes it clear that crafts are about softgoods, and projects are larger scale.
  • Choose good photographs for the cover photos of your board.  Usually a landscape photo works best since you'll crop a large portion of portrait oriented photos.


Take some time and go through your boards. 



  • If you're like me, most likely you started your Pinterest with general boards like "home" and then made new boards with more specific categories like "kitchen."  And in the past, Pinterest didn't have the amazing option to MOVE multiple pins from one board to another.  Now that they do, go through and make sure all your pins are on the correct board.  It is easier than ever now.



After you've renamed your boards in a consistent and artistic format, reorder the boards on your account page, choose great looking and informative cover photos, and go through your boards to look for pins that have gone astray, then you'll have a wonderfully organized Pinterest account!  This can take a lot of time, so I suggest getting the flu and having all the time in the world to do it!



Okay, I don't recommend the flu on any of you, but maybe take advantage of a cold winter day to stop pinning about organizing and start actually doing it!  



How do you keep your Pinterest account organized?



P.S.  If you aren't already following me, you can find my Pinterest and other social media buttons to your right!


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Friday, November 8, 2013

DIY Photography Background & Photobook Review


I've known for a while now that I needed to make some photo backdrops for photographing things for the blog and for my etsy shop.  I've known.  I really have.

But knowing and doing are separate things, and I never got around to making them.  I've been considering the concrete of our front porch acceptable, until recently maintenance scraped the entire concrete up, and it is no longer uniform in color, and has lines all over the place.  Not pretty, and takes away from the objects I'm photographing.

Finally, I did it.  I used the wall paper I'd bought a year ago for this very purpose to make a photo background.  I decided to use the light colored cream paper and the vintage floral paper this time.


First, I glued to pieces of foam board together to make the backdrop more sturdy.  I was reusing some old foam board, so I just wanted to be sure it didn't bend.

Here are my pieces glued together.

I wanted my backdrop to be double sided.  One side I used a vintage floral wallpaper.

This side is just plain cream wallpaper.

Glue your wall paper (or other paper) to the boards and let them dry.

And now I'm going to demonstrate my photo backdrop as well as show you my free photo books that I received!  One book was free because I filled out a survey about our wedding for the Knot, another was from a coupon that was in one of the ink cartridge packages I bought when I was printing our wedding invitations.  

 The left book is a 20 page hardcover from Shutterfly, and the right book is a softcover from Snapfish.
And since I've got them right next to each other (and yes, I realize the softcover is lesser value), I just want to say that Shutterfly's quality is awesome.  

No, unfortunately they aren't compensating me to say that!  (I wish!)


My apologies for the glare on these.  I took the photos at night with a direct light in the house over them...there was no avoiding glares.

Apparently there was also no avoiding fuzzy pictures.  I miss my not iPhone camera!



We ordered our Save the Dates from Shutterfly, and I am just super impressed by how well their images and products look.  And...I'm not really impressed with Snapfish.  But thanks for the free book anyway, Snapfish!  I still like it!  

These pages of the honeymoon are from the Snapfhish book...





Do you have other suggestions for good blog photo backgrounds?  I often use our wooden table, and some slabs of wood for photographing, but its harder to get those outside in the natural light.  I would love to hear where you find your best photos coming from!


Sunday, March 3, 2013

Sunday Social

I'm linking up with the Sunday Social today!  This week's theme is 5 things....so here are my 5 things in the various topics!


1. 5 songs you’ll listen to the rest of your life: 
  • I Believe in a Thing Called Love - The Darkness  This song is too funny to not listen to.
  • Bed Intruder Song - Antoine Dodson  No need to explain.  Just hilarious.
  • Double Rainbow - Weird Youtube Guy  Also just hilarious. I'll never forget singing this song in my class when I studied abroad as our representation of American culture.  American culture = YouTube viral videos. 
  • I Want to Hold Your Hand - The Beatles  This song was one of my first "songs" with my fiancĂ©.  
  • Easier to Be - Lifehouse  Umm...just listen to this one and you'll know why I love it.  So sweet.
Okay, in all seriousness...some of these are definitely not my top 5 favorites, but if I told you that, I'd be giving away my wedding playlist...so I put 3 funny songs that I will most definitely listen to the rest of my life because they make me laugh.  The other two are sentimental, but don't play a huge role in my wedding. haha

2. 5 things on your bucket list: 
  • Get this wedding done and over!
  • Live happily ever after.
  • Go back to China.
  • Travel a lot of places my my sweetheart.
  • Adopt a child.

3. 5 celebs you’d love to hang out with for a day: 
I'm not a big fan of celebrities, so I'd probably just use the opportunity for free cooking lessons from...
  • Ree Drummond...she has the best blog and I love her recipes.  I want her to teach me to cook.
  • Paula Dean...I like butter too.
  • Rachel Ray...she makes everything look easy.
  • A Korean Chef (sorry, I don't know of one)...because I love Korean food.
  • A Mexican Chef (I also don't know of one of these)...because I also love Mexican food.

4. 5 things you always carry on your purse: 
  • Driver's Lisence
  • Chap Stick
  • Keys
  • Debit Cards
  • Starbucks Card

5. 5 books on your reading list:
I really hate reading books...but I will read:
  • Tutorials with pictures.
  • The International BBC News
  • Recipes
  • Pinterest
  • Letters and emails addressed to me.

6. Share the last 5 pictures on your phone:
Umm, my iphone tragically drowned in a cup of water on the way to Thanksgiving in November, so I'm using a dinosaur phone now.  I can't even check my voicemail because it has a password, and I don't know the password.  It does have the capability to take pictures, but I don't because they are so blurry you can't tell what the pictures are.  

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

New Look and Buttons!

So I spent some time to update the bloggy look!  Please let me know what you think (especially if there are any weird sizing issues with your browser.)  I am using a not-so-traditional "monitor" due to my laptop with a broken screen (check here if you missed that...), so I don't see the same sized browser as everyone else.  I'll probably continue to make some new tweaks, but I changed my template for a more clean design, lightened the colors, and changed my header.

I also have buttons available for sharing now!  If you're interested in swapping buttons and being displayed on my sidebar, comment on this post and we can trade!

I was really thankful as well to find this button generator.  I feel like my boxes look nice (I really had no idea how to go about making button codes), so if you haven't done buttons...I'm linking back to where I generated my codes.  It was super easy, and I could make my code boxes match by using the html code colors by copying and pasting them from my settings.  (Like I said, I really don't get html stuff...I cheat all the way!)
Here is the link:
http://www.mycoolrealm.com/sandbox/gbgen/

And I now present to you my new buttons!
(Now just to think that I will most likely change them all after we get wedding pictures back....)
Let's Drink Coffee, Darling


Let's Drink Coffee, Darling


Let's Drink Coffee, Darling


Let's Drink Coffee, Darling


If these sizes aren't good, I can fix another one up really quickly!  Again, just comment on this post.

And here's to one small step for Saxon-kind in the blog world....

Copyright 2012-2014 Saxon Smith (Let's Drink Coffee, Darling). All rights reserved.
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