*blinks* *stretches*Β *yawns*

Oh! Hey look at that! It’s January and I’m back!! I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and New Year if you partake in the festivities or a nice break if you don’t! My Christmas was really lovely – we spent it with Wayne’s family and enjoyed a fabulous turkey dinner with all the fixings, perfectly prepared by my amazing boyfriend, loud dramatic renditions of ‘Frozen’ with my nieces, paper hats, fairy lights and a good time had by all. New Year’s Eve wasΒ a little more down key than planned as I got struck down by illness but well, there’s always next year to party, right? Right.

So! Shall we address the rather stylish elephant in the room? Oh yes, you might have noticed that it’s looking a little different around these parts – yes, while everyone else was luxuriating in time off from work, guzzling eggnog and stuffing their faces with mince pies, I was working on a new design for my blog… whilst also guzzling eggnog and stuffing my face with mince pies. Don’t judge me.

Swoon Worthy

If you are having a look at this on your phone or via a reader, then please please do click on over to the main site – I would love for you to really get to see all the pretty nifty changes around here.

I decided that I would use my break wisely – moving my entire site from Blogger to WordPress and creating a brand new look for Swoon Worthy… Something I probably should have done about 3 years ago but worriedΒ I lacked the skills to take on myself. In fact, I had resigned myself to hiring a designer but after much deliberation I realised that I’m so particular about things that if I really wanted this to happen within a very short time frame, I would need to just bite the bullet and do it myself. And ya know what? It was a hell of a learning curve, sure, but was it impossible? Of course not. So here she is, the result of many many hours of researching and a horrifying number ofΒ hours applying that knowledge to this little space.

So what’s changed?

My logo: Okay, so if you’ve been with me here for any length of time, you will know that I change my logo like it’s Beyonce in concert,Β so it’s hardly surprising that with a new design came the desire to give my logo a little makeover. I really love the look of calligraphy so decided to purchase a new font and go to town.

Swoon Worthy logo

 

My strapline: Now despite always changing my logo, I haven’t changed my strapline for about 4 years. But after lots of consideration, I realised something. That my style is my USP (Unique Selling Point if you aren’t familiar with corny Marketing acronyms) and my style is the thing that most people remember about me (and the thing I’m interviewed about most). So, “Inspiration, DIY and the Quest for Pretty on the Cheap” has now become “The Home of Eclectic Boho Glam”. Does that mean this blog is changing it’s quest for pretty on the cheap or that I won’t be talking about DIY anymore? Absolutely not – the content isn’t going anywhere, just the packaging it’s wrapped in!

My Home Page:Β I now have a proper static ‘home page’ which allows you to find content pretty easily while wrapped up in some pretty pictures – so you can jump straight into my home tour (which is now multiple galleries, much easier to click through rather than a ridiculously long single post and much easier for me to keep up to date) or you can click on my smiling head to read a little bit about me. Or you can check out all of my How To’s in one place. Or, of course, you can just click on any of the last 3 posts shown in the bottom row to read the blogΒ (they are in chronological order). Lots of options! This also allows me to showcase content outside of just the blog – not just for the freelance work I’m doing now but also because I have some pretty cool stuff planned this year so stay tuned for that.

The Menu: There’s also a top floating drop downΒ menuΒ which allows to get where you want to go no matter where on the site you are – so if you want to just look at the posts about, say, the kitchen, you can do that by hovering overΒ Categories > My Home > Kitchen and when clicked, you’ll be greeted with a lovely grid of posts with images, allowing you to find just the thing you are searching for. It’s so much simpler than what I’d had on Blogger.

SW 2015 category dropdown

(Apologies for the ‘double menu’ in the middle of some of my screen shots – I couldn’t for the life of me get a screen shot without it happening and obviously it won’t look like this when you view it on your own screen.)

Kitchen Β» Swoon Worthy

 

Sneak Peeks: Once you are within a single post, you can hover your mouse on the left or right margins of the screen and you’ll get a little peek of the posts that are older or newer around it. Give it a try now, it’s pretty cool.

SW sneak peek posts

Free Goodies for Subscribers: Also, I am giving you a little incentive to sign up for my email notifications – I put a little PDF together on my Ten Tips to Get an Eclectic Boho Glam Look on a Budget and if you sign up, you get it free. Just for being so cool. So there’s that. Go on and click on the link in my sidebar for free swoony goodness and to get a little email reminder every time I post new content here. I promise I won’t spam you or anything. For my current subscribers, don’t worry, I’ll be sending this out to you all very soon.

10 Tips image

I think the thing I like best, however, is that I feel like this design is really ME. Everything I read about designing a blog said your blog should reflect your content – it should be indicative of what your blog is all about. And I think this does – and I hope you do too.

Bear in mind, there are still a few little buggy things going on – for instance, on some of my older posts, no image is pulling through to those category pages. It’s just something I’m working through fixing as I go. I also am well aware that there was about a year where many of my ‘inspiration’ photos broke. Apart from practicallyΒ rewriting those particular posts for the entire year, unfortunately, there’s not much I can do so apologies for that. There are also a few links that need updating and I’m trying to get those fixed as quickly as I can. So there are a lot of things I’m working through slowly but it all takes time.

Of course, if you have any questions or seeΒ something that’s not quite right, there’s a little contact form *points up to the menu* that you can drop me a line on or leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to sort it out!

Otherwise, I hope you love the new look as much as I do! I’d love to hear what you think!

If you need a reminder of what the old blog looked like, you can see a screenshot hereΒ – (click on the image to view full size).

If you’re curious, I used Prophoto to edit my design – it was worth every penny and their support staff is brilliant. Also, if you click that link, you’ll get a $10 discount (and I get a $7 referral fee). Win win. I also used the Velvet theme by Dawn Alderman. I was not paid to switch over nor did I receive anything in return for that plug, I just think it’s a brilliant way to design a site and I’m a happy customer.

 


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