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!

The post Creative hashtags for Instagram appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

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!)

The post Blogtacular 2015 appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

It was my Mum’s birthday in April, and I made her this top. It’s my favourite top to make and wear – cool and comfy for summer and the only really tricky-ish bit is the neck binding. I got the fabric in the sale ages ago and it was nice to finally make it!

I also made her a caramel cake for her birthday cake, and I haven’t got around to sharing the recipe yet – but I will! It’s from the Clandestine Cake Club book, which is brilliant. I want to make everything out of that book!

Our dear friend Hannah got married earlier this month, and I stitched this sampler from Hoopla! magazine. It has been ages since I did any hand embroidery like this, and I had forgotten just how much I love it! I painted the hoop a lovely turquoise colour and it worked really well with the design. Hannah and her husband went off on honeymoon straight away, so I hope the last bits of disappearing pen had actually gone by the time they opened it! If you want to download the template, you can get it here from Bakercourt (designed by Stacey Siddons).

I also have to share the wonderful cake that Hannah made – if you’ve been following my blog a while then you might know that a Hannah made our wedding cake. Well, this is the same Hannah! She’s so incredibly talented. Just look at those flowers!

This month I have found some lovely things in the blog world.

How gorgeous is this outfit by Lucky Lucille? I love everything about it, and the styling of the photos is just gorgeous. I know I used the word ‘gorgeous’ a lot there, but it really is!

So is this floral DIY for your bike – makes me really want a bike! A pink vintage style one, obviously…

My lovely crafty friend Dizzy Miss James was featured on Beak Up Crafts this month – yay! Her story is really inspiring, so well worth a read.

I have also found some cool new things via Instagram this month. Stylusboy (aka Steve Jones) commented on one of my photos and so I checked out his music on his website. It’s great! It’s billed as ‘handmade indie folk music’, and that’s a good summing up I reckon. It turns out that he’s supported lots of great people on tour, and I’ll definitely be adding some of his music to our ever-growing collection. Have a listen here!

Have you heard about Caboodle Magazine? I also found this through Instagram, and the first edition was released this month. It’s a super mix of craft, fashion, food, vintage…lovely, lovely stuff. It’s also produced in my home town of York! Really hope that the team can keep going after such a great start – looking forward to seeing how the project develops. I’ll be reviewing it properly on my blog for you soon!

The Blogtacular speakers were announced this month – even more excited now! Check them out here. You can also listen to Kat Molesworth’s podcast for A Playful Day here – it’s all about creativity in blogging. Fab!

What new discoveries have you made this month? Share them by leaving a comment below! Hope you’ve had a great April

The post Bits & Bobs: April 2015 appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

The first special I bought was the photography special. I am really keen to improve my photography skills (which has been well-documented on my blog) and as I don’t really know much about the technical side of things I thought this would be helpful in terms of doing a bit more than just ‘point and shoot’! There are loads of really helpful tips in here and this special is great for giving ideas about new ways of taking photos. I love the idea of making your own camera! There’s also a really great section on food photography, which is notoriously very difficult.

The interviews with various people who do this for a living are really informative and inspiring. It definitely makes me want to get out there with my camera! This is where I really saw Project Life for the first time, and it was one of the reasons I decided to get started with that. I’m really glad I did![/vc_column_text][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” interval=”3″ images=”7365,7366,7367,7368″ onclick=”link_image” custom_links_target=”_self” column_number=”2″ grayscale=”no” choose_frame=”default” img_size=”large”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1429176774500{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]

DIY Fashion is up next – I love the Liberty print dress on the front cover (made by Lisa Comfort of Sew Over It, who also guest-edits here) and will definitely have to make one out of that fabric at some point! This special is divided into four different fashion trends: vintage, quirky, bohemian and retro, with different projects and features in each one. Whilst I don’t necessarily stick to one of these trends, each one has inspiring elements which you could adapt into your own style. So you could take the fabric painting technique used in the flamingo t-shirt, and make your own retro style print.

The embellishing tips are really useful here too – I’ve got some ideas in my head for projects and I’ve never really done anything like that before. It’s a good excuse to go and buy some supplies! So even if you’re not going to make the exact projects from this special, you’ll certainly be inspired to go and create your own wardrobe.[/vc_column_text][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” interval=”3″ images=”7357,7360,7358,7359″ onclick=”link_image” custom_links_target=”_self” column_number=”2″ grayscale=”no” choose_frame=”default” img_size=”large”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1429177451187{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]

The Blogging special has been really helpful in so many ways for my blog, so whether you’re new to blogging or you’ve been doing it a while now, I’m sure there’s something in it for you. The interview with Elsie Larson from A Beautiful Mess is super interesting to read, as she talks about perceptions of blogging as a career and is really honest about the pros and cons of that. Great to read all about it from someone I really admire. The feature on Blogtacular made me even more excited about getting a ticket for this year – woo hoo! Can’t wait to make new connections and learn so much in June.

I guess that’s one of the main things I took from this special – there’s always more to learn. Since buying this I’ve tried to put some of the things I’ve learnt into practice, and I’ve also been signing up for online classes and events like Blogtacular. In a sphere that’s constantly changing with so many people blogging now, it’s important to be yourself and get yourself noticed as much as possible. This special will certainly point you in the right direction! I believe I am right in saying that all physical copies of this have now sold out (on account of it being really popular!) but you can still download it for Apple or Android through the newsstand (or Android equivalent).[/vc_column_text][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” interval=”3″ images=”7361,7362,7363,7364″ onclick=”link_image” custom_links_target=”_self” column_number=”2″ grayscale=”no” choose_frame=”default” img_size=”large”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1429178510451{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]

Next up is Sewing, which features another of my favourites Tilly Walnes from Tilly and the Buttons (as well as a bit more from Lisa Comfort – yay!). How gorgeous is the patchwork dress on the front?! Like the DIY Fashion special, this is really inspiring, even if you don’t make the projects as you see them. There’s a lot of repurposing and reusing, and it’s great to think about things that are in your wardrobe that can be reworked into something new.

If you’re new to sewing, there are loads of handy tips about sewing machines and techniques. I just love looking at different fabrics and there are plenty to lust over in this edition! Will definitely be trying to track down some of them…[/vc_column_text][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” interval=”3″ images=”7369,7372,7370,7371″ onclick=”link_image” custom_links_target=”_self” column_number=”2″ grayscale=”no” choose_frame=”default” img_size=”large”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1429175183628{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]

I’ve saved this one until last as it’s my favourite (even though they are all lovely!). It is divided into several main sections that cover Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest, with an extra (brief) section for things like Google+. For those of you who are completely new to any of these social media, there’s a handy bit at the start of each section to explain how they work and what the different functions do. Lots of people will know this already, but it’s great if you don’t know your likes from your pokes on Facebook, for example! Even though I know a bit about social media already, I have learnt so much more from this special. Who knew that Pinterest has an analytics function?! I didn’t, but will definitely be trying it out soon! It also made me have a little spring clean of my boards, so do check out my Pinterest boards if you’re on it.

Another thing that I love about this special is that they have included some suggestions of people to follow on each of the social media too – the feature on Emily Quinton of Makelight is really interesting and I’ve been a fan of hers for a while now so it was good to find out more about how she’s grown her audience. I found the section about Twitter to be really useful too. It’s my least favourite of the social media by far, but I know it’s one of those things that I’ve just got to do! Hopefully the ideas here will prompt me into being a bit more proactive on my Twitter account.

[/vc_column_text][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” interval=”3″ images=”7379,7382,7380,7381″ onclick=”link_image” custom_links_target=”_self” column_number=”2″ grayscale=”no” choose_frame=”default” img_size=”large”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1429178784523{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]”So are there any downsides?”, I hear you ask…well, these specials are a bit more pricey than the usual magazines at £7.99 (the Blogging special was £9.99 but it is slightly bigger). I didn’t get the Christmas one last year because I actually had lots of the projects featured in it in craft books that I already have and it seemed like a waste of money really. So if you’re thinking of getting them you might want to flick through it first. If you’re an avid Mollie Makes reader and have been reading for some time, you may also recognise some of the projects from previous issues (e.g. the fabric camera strap in the Photography special was in a back issue a couple of years ago or so) – and the interview with Zoe Pearson in the Social Media special was in issue 51 of the main magazine only last month. It must be difficult to get the balance between reusing content that takes AGES to write and shoot, and keeping regulars happy. I really enjoyed reading the rest of the magazine so it didn’t bother me too much, but I wouldn’t want to see too many features reused in such a short space of time too often.

If you’re a blogger or a small business person looking to improve your blog or photography, or you want to get the most out of social media then you should definitely grab a copy of these specials! The sewing one is beautiful too – I was really inspired by some of the projects and especially by the prints and styling of the photos. Fab!

Have you bought any of these specials? What did you think?

***This is not a sponsored post – I am genuinely a huge Mollie Makes fan!***[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post Mollie Makes specials appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

We seem to have been out and about loads over the past few weeks, so I’ve got so many photos to share! Highlights include a trip to the Northern Quilt Show with my Mum, a trip to Beamish, our holiday to Maryport, and we also had tickets to the Great North Run 1 Million Opening Ceremony! We managed to get a spot right at the front on the quayside, which was amazing – a brilliant night!

I’m so pleased with this photo from the ceremony!

When I went to stay with Mum and Dad at the end of August, I made my Dad a very special cake to celebrate him working his last ever overtime on a Saturday – he’s done it for over 30 years! He loves his records and we recently gave him our record player, so I made him an LP cake. For those of you who don’t know, ‘Mornin’ avids’ is how Brian Matthews opens his radio show on Radio 2 every Saturday morning – Dad will be able to sit and listen every week now The cake is a Victoria sponge with buttercream and homemade blackberry curd inside, and I made the LPs out of icing, using a cocktail stick to make the ridges.

You might have caught a glimpse of some photos from the quilt show in my Project Life post yesterday – I will be writing a post about it, so you’ll get to see a bit more! There are some photos on Instagram so have a look there if you can’t wait… Other exciting things that have happened include: booking my ticket for Blogtacular 2015 (I didn’t go this year and really wished I had, so I can’t wait!), making top secret things and starting making Christmas stuff (sorry for using the C word!) and getting into Project Life. And there are so many exciting things coming up too! What have you been up to recently?

 [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post Catching up… appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.