It has been a week since my new look website launch, and I can’t believe how that time has flown! I had intended to write this blog post a little sooner to coincide with the launch, but life happens and it kept getting pushed back. I’m in full-on market prep mode for our Etsy Made Local events here in Newcastle, but it has been in the back of my mind that I wanted to at least say hello again before then. So, hello! I’m back – yay!

I really hope that you love my new site as much as I do. I have to say that I’ve had some wonderful feedback about it over the last 7 days, so thanks to everyone who got in touch via social media! It has been a labour of love as I’ve been building it myself since the end of September. I’m not going to lie, fitting it around family life has been a bit tricky at times. But Tom has been amazing as ever, and we worked out days where I could have decent chunks of time to work on it. This has actually been a gamechanger to be honest, and we now try and work it out each week. I find that it’s a great way to avoid procrastination and I can approach the week much more positively when I know that there will be time to work on my business.

Crafty Commerce

I basically have no coding experience whatsoever, except for the odd occasion when I’ve managed to copy some code to sort out spacing (haha!). My friend Dan from Baltic Design (who has hosted my blog for years) and said he wanted to create a platform for creatives to build their website, and I have basically been testing this out for him. I am so thrilled with the results! It has all been done front-end and I have created something which is unique to me. I now have my own shop, where you can purchase my embroidered items, kits, workshops and more! My blog is much more appealing and I feel like I can actually share it with people again (it was a bit of a mess after I tried to change the theme – nightmare!). So yes, this platform is coming but it needs a bit more set-up before it’s widely available. If you’re interested, you can find out more about Crafty Commerce here.

In other news…

So there are a LOT of other things going on, some of which you’ll already know about if you follow me on Instagram. We are getting used to life with 2 children and our baby boy is just the sweetest. He is in love with his big sister, crawled at 6 months and his current favourite thing is waving. We can’t remember life without him now!

I also handed my notice in at the day job in September, so will be fully working on Hello! Hooray! from January! I am beyond excited about this – my book comes out next summer and it just felt like the right time to go for it. That and the fact that it has been making me feel like rubbish for longer than I should have let it. That’s all I’ll say about it for now – onwards and upwards!

These little rainbows are my current favourite make and they have been popular in the shop! Custom versions are available, and I’m working on getting more ready to ship hoops too. Once my markets are done at the end of the month, I’ll list any here so you can snap them up. I have too many ideas and not enough time right now, but I’m hoping to use some time in January to get some more things made.

I have embroidery workshops listed in my shop, and I’m delighted to be hosting some at For the Love of the North in the New Year. I’m a huge fan of Lucy and Paul and how they support North East creatives. They have just opened another shop at Spanish City in Whitley Bay, and we’ll be stitching there at my workshops. So excited!

YAY it’s good to be back!

Sign up to my newsletter (link in footer or sidebar) if you’d like to be kept up-to-date with more happenings, and find out first about new products and special offers. And look out for more blog posts coming soon…

Tell me what you’ve been up to – I’d love to know what you’ve been doing, seeing and making!

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The Amara Blog Awards

In case you’ve never heard of the Amara blog awards, they celebrate the best bloggers from the interiors industry and have been running since 2013. The awards keep growing and growing and are judged by some amazing panelists. The Best Colour Inspiration Blog will be judged in 2018 by Sophie Robinson (TV presenter and designer) and Emma Jane Palin (colourful lifestyle blogger – who I actually met on the Blogtacular photowalk this year and she’s so inspiring!). You can find out more about them and the other judges here.

There’s some big competition in this category, so it’s really an honour to be nominated. I would LOVE it if you could vote for me and my blog – I’ve been doing this since 2012 around my day job and I absolutely love doing it – every vote means such a lot! Click here to vote for Hello! Hooray!

Win a SOFORT camera with Leica!

Amara Interior Blog Awards are giving away a Leica camera to one lucky voter. Vote for Hello! Hooray! to be entered into the giveaway! Every voter is automatically entered into the prize draw, with the winner being announced on Wednesday 26th September. So to enter this competition with @amaraibas and #IBA18, just vote for me! Ts and Cs can be found here. Voting closes Wednesday 19th September, 12pm BST. Good luck, and thank you!

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My creative hashtags for Instagram are divided up into the following 7 categories: craft, creativity, colour, nature and florals, blogging, food and finally, a list of other ones I couldn’t categorise.

Craft

I guess I post about this the most because my blog is mainly craft-related, so I’m often making use of craft hashtags. Some of them are related to specific crafts, like sewing or embroidery, whilst others are a little more general. Here are the ones I use most:

#craft – generally a good place to start!

#fabric

#sewing (also tags like #patchwork and #quilting depending on the type of thing I’m making)

#crafternoon – a good hashtag if you’re sharing progress photos of a project or crafting with friends

#embroidery

#stitchlove

#imadethis – good for showing off your makes!

#feelingcrafty

#craftymama – I’ve started using this one since Little One was born, and it’s lovely to find other crafty Mamas

#ilovehandmade

#handmadelove

You can use #cbloggers, #craftblog or #craftbloggers to get your craft blog noticed

There are also some lovely crafty communities to get involved with:

#wemakecollective – community created by Francesca Stone from Fall for DIY and managed by Claire Wilson of Claireabellemakes

#makersgonnamake – suggested by one of my Instagram followers, Claire, and I’ll definitely be using this one – it’s for sharing current projects, craft supplies and tutorials

#craftsposure – this is a new one for me, but the @craftsposure community has over 229K followers on Instagram!

#molliemakers – for the community of Mollie Makes fans

#abmcrafty – for the crafty followers of A Beautiful Mess (just one of their many hashtags!)

#makeitsewcial – community originally created by Allison Sadler (see her latest project in the Creativity hashtags section)

Creativity

There are lots of great creative communities out there – some were mentioned above in the craft section – but I wanted to give particular mention to these:

#creative

#creativity

#freestylecreativeliving – created by Allison Sadler, it’s a wonderful place to share and discover and I really love the ethos behind the project! Read about it here and here.

#creativehappylife

#abmhappylife

Colour

As you’ve probably guessed by now, I like a bit of colour! These hashtags are great for finding inspiration:

#colour

#colourful

#crafttherainbow – a side project from The House That Lars Built

#colorcolourlovers – hosted by Xanthe Berkeley and Andrea Jenkins, usually to brighten up the winter months but people seem to use this hashtag all year round (well, it’s autumn or winter somewhere in the world now!)

#livecolorfully

#abmlifeiscolorful

With some colour hashtags you need to check your spelling of ‘colour’ to see if you need to go American, but I generally stick to English English

Nature and florals

I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of looking at beautiful floral photography! Even a simple daisy can be just beautiful. Use these hashtags to share and find floral inspiration:

#flowers

#floral

#nature

#floralfridaycompetition – run by Emily Quinton of Makelight (I really LOVE Emily’s photography)

#allthingsbotanical – Selina Lake‘s hashtag for sharing particular natural things (it’s roses for June 2016!)

#inspiredbypetals

#naturelovers

#floralstyling – great for inspiration!

Blogging

Using the right hashtags can often get you noticed by certain groups – marketers looking for sponsor opportunities or perhaps other bloggers in the same niche or geographical area. Some of these are specific to me in the North East of England, so search out hashtags for your local area!

#lbloggers – lifestyle bloggers

#newblogpost – good to show when there’s something new up on your blog

#ukblogger

#lbloggersuk

#creativebloggers – show what you do in your hashtag

#nebloggers – this is a hashtag for bloggers in the North East of England

#nefollowers

#hellohoorayblog – have a hashtag for your blog!

Food

I haven’t used too many hashtags for food – I try to avoid Instagramming my dinner if I possibly can! Most of the ones I use are baking related as that’s mainly what I do at the moment. I’d love to use some more foodie hashtags, so let me know if you have any suggestions!

#baking

#cake

#chocolate

#instafood

#sweet

#fresh

#homemade

#foodpics

A few others to finish…

These are a few other hashtags that you might want to consider – I couldn’t think of a good category name for these ones as there are just a few for a few random things!

Styling

#stylingtheseasons

#aquietstyle

Kids

#littlefierceones

#childhoodunplugged

General

#tbt – to throwback to something from the past on a Thursday!

#followfriday or #fridayfavourite – use these to showcase another account or maker that you love

Don’t forget that you can join me with the hashtag #futurecreativeprojects on Instagram – use that hashtag and tag me @hellohoorayblog so I can see what you’re planning to make!

I hope you found my list of creative hashtags for Instagram useful, especially if you’re new to Instagram If you’re an old hand, are there any that I’ve missed off that you think I should be using? Let me know in the comments below!

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It has been quite a steep learning curve for me in terms of getting to grips with the technology. I managed to upload the videos last night (having spent all day working super hard on finishing them off) but I had issues with thumbnails argh…but this morning I have fixed it and I even managed to install a thingy-bob that lets me put them on my blog too. Yay!

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At the moment you can see the ‘welcome’ video (see above) and my first tutorial, which is about how to make envelopes. This was how I really got into crafting and so it seemed fitting that it was my first one! I’m not currently feeling that confident at being in front of the camera so for now, you’ll mainly see my hands in the tutorials! I did want to introduce myself properly though, so you can see me on camera in my first video. Here is my envelopes tutorial:

[embedplusvideo height=”480″ width=”800″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1CwAFEj” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/ht33U1yLcb0?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=ht33U1yLcb0&width=800&height=480&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep7838″ /]

One of the things that has been brilliant about making these is that Tom has composed some original music for my videos. I gave him a very brief brief, which was basically that I wanted some jolly tunes that people could hum along to as I do love a good tune! I also wanted the music for each video to be sort of the same but different – thankfully he knew what I meant by this, so the music uses the same instruments to tie them together. The opening and closing credits are the same for each video, but listen out for the different bits he has written. I am so grateful to Tom for writing this for me (thank you!). If you’d like, you can check out his website – Ordered Sound. I also want to say a big thank you to my lovely sister-in-law, Naomi, who first encouraged me to have a go at making some videos, and also showed me how to use iMovie and Garageband (which I use to make them). Thank you!

I am working on a few more ideas at the moment and so hopefully there will be more on the way soon. If you would like to subscribe to my channel that would be brilliant – just pop over to my channel and say hello. Thank you! Hope you have a super weekend

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Early last Saturday morning, I joined the other lucky people who were picked to go on the Blogtacular 2015 photowalk with West Elm. We met at the London Eye at 7am (!!) and were split into two groups – one with Xanthe Berkeley and the group I was with was led by Samee Lapham. We explored the Southbank which is such a vibrant, colourful area with a LOT of photo opportunities. It was brilliant to meet some lovely new people before the main event, and we got to know each other well along the way!

West Elm Blogtacular Photowalk 2015 Official Photos by Piers MacDonald

West Elm Blogtacular Photowalk 2015 Official Photos by Piers MacDonald

We were all asked to wear something Instagrammable, so I wore my bright pink coat There was a lot of Instagramming going on along the way – you can see more by searching for #WestElmLondonScenes The balloons were a big feature along the way too – how brilliant are the big balloons?! I was very excited to have the pink one for a while, as you can imagine!

A huge thank you again to Blogtacular and West Elm for organising this photowalk, and also to Xanthe (seen in my last photo) and Samee for being so welcoming along the way!

Post updated 12th February 2020.

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The day started out with the photo walk, which as you probably already know, I was SO excited about! And it didn’t disappoint. I’ll be posting about that separately so you can see lots of my photos from the walk, so look out for that soon. Balloons. That’s all I’m saying…

After the photo walk, we made our way to the venue which was the beautiful Royal Institution of Great Britain. It’s the perfect venue, with the main lecture theatre being used throughout the day and additional rooms for talks and workshops too. I think I speak for all attendees when I say that we were eagerly anticipating the keynote speaker, Grace Bonney from Design*Sponge. Her message was to embrace change and use it to take control of what you are doing and find your true path, and she really connected with the audience. So inspiring! And also (from the point of view of my day job) she has such a great presenting style – so relaxed, but she maintained a great relationship with the audience. So if you want to learn how to give a presentation or just find out more about what she said, keep a look-out for the release of the recording which will be made available (thanks to MailChimp who sponsored the keynote).

It was actually really difficult to choose which sessions to go to on the day – they all sounded amazing! I caught up with the lovely Josephine from Courage and Dash, and we had mainly decided to go to slightly different things which allowed us to swap notes on a few sessions I loved hearing more about how Francesca Stone made the leap to full-time blogging, and the Grow Your Audience panel was super interesting! Great to hear perspectives from bloggers who blog about totally different things, and how they have built up their audience through their blogs and social media. The photography styling workshops were naturally very busy, but it was great to get some hands on tips and style things in a completely different way to my usual style. I went along to the Food Photography and Styling workshop with Marte Marie Forsberg, who talked about her concept of ‘visual storytelling’. She has such a distinctive style of photography, which we got to replicate in the workshop, and she highlighted ways in which she considers light, composition and angle when styling a photo. The next two photos are what I took in the workshop – what do you think?!

Blogtacular 2015 Official Photos by Piers MacDonald

One of the key themes to emerge throughout the whole conference was creating the sense of community – making connections and building each other up, rather than putting down or competing with other people. Collaboration was emphasised a lot and we were encouraged to make new connections and build upon existing ones, and it was refreshing to be in a place where everyone felt the same about that. One of the things I loved is that this sense of community was promoted in the run-up to the big day. There was a Facebook group, Twitter chat, people linking up via Instagram before Saturday – and all of these things meant that you could hope to spot a friendly face, or look out for someone you had always wanted to meet. So people just mingled, swapped business cards, chatted and exchanged ideas – whatever their blogging background. At the dinner organised for the Friday night, I went along on my own not really knowing who I’d be sitting with. I ended up having a really lovely chat with Renee from East London Knit, Aby from You Baby Me Mummy  as well as Blogtacular organisers Kat and Kat (and her husband)! I also found myself sitting next to Marte and Nikki McWilliams, who designed the amazing bag which contained all of our lovely goodies. So having asked several times ‘are you sure you don’t mind me sitting here?!’ I ended up chatting away and feeling really relaxed about the whole thing. This is what it’s all about – the blogging community is just the best!

Another theme was to be authentic. There were some great tips given by the Mollie Makes team (Lara Watson and Jessica Bateman) about how to achieve this, and their session Finding Your Voice left me with so many ideas and things to think about! In a world where so many people are blogging it’s even more important to be you. One of their top tips was to write as though you are chatting to a friend, avoiding cliches if you can. They also have a list of words that are banned from Mollie Makes, which included ‘totes’, ‘darling’ and ‘an Aladdin’s cave’ – love that!

The closing keynote was by Anthony Peters, who has been working on a documentary called ‘Made You Look: a film about creativity in the digital age’. It went down a storm! And it’s safe to say that we’ll all be going to see this when it is released in October. We were shown some clips from the film, where creators such as Anthony Burrill speak about the analog creative process and perceptions of that process in a digital age. I left with so many thoughts about this and I’m still trying to process them all! So for now, if you want to see the trailer you can find it here – I would highly recommend it.

We headed over to West Elm for the Pintacular evening event of crafting and more chatting! There was a line up of amazing makers hosting craft workshops – Mr X Stitch, Nikki McWilliams, Zeena Shah and Viktorija Semjonova from AndSmile. I painted a cactus print with Viktorija, who was so lovely and encouraging despite my lack of drawing and painting skills! You can see my creation on her Instagram feed. After that I had a quick scout around the other crafts, but I was so tired (having got up at 5:15am!) that I decided to call it a night.

West Elm x Pinterest UK Pintacular at Blogtacular 2015 Official Photos by Piers MacDonald.

Blogtacular was even more than I thought it would be. I hope I’ve managed to convey some of what we experienced in this post! Whether you have a big blog with thousands of followers or you’re just starting out and building your following, there is something at Blogtacular for everyone. And not just one thing – many things! So if you haven’t made it along yet, you should definitely do it next year. Come and join the community – I’ll see you next year!

A couple of final things to say – firstly a HUGE thank you to Kat and Kat for organising Blogtacular. I can’t even comprehend how much work must have gone into organising it! Thank you also for making me feel so welcome Thank you to the sponsors who make it possible too, and to Mollie Makes and Piers MacDonald for the excellent photography (and permission to use it!).

Main photo credit: Blogtacular 2015 Official Photos by Piers MacDonald (thanks Mollie Makes!)

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