You may be wondering why I am only just reviewing it now, given that Blogtacular was back in June! The main reason is that because it tied in so nicely with many of the themes at the conference, I actually just needed a bit of time with my thoughts to really think about it. Another is that I just had to read it again, as I enjoyed it SO much! My first reading of it took place on the train to London, and I read half the book on the way there and the rest on the way back (despite me having to get a super early train to be back at work on the Monday morning!). I really felt that I just had to read it again, and do some of the suggested activities and think about how they could help me.

“Have nice times.”

The first message that Pip discusses it the concept of happiness. It was really interesting to read this – and she’s so right when she talks about how the pursuit of happiness has actually become some sort of anxiety in itself. One of my favourite quotes from this section goes like this:

“Happiness is something to celebrate. But don’t let it get in the way of you having a nice time.”

Focussing on the nice times can be helpful not only in appreciating the real happy times, but can also help to build a system to be able to cope with the not-so-nice times, which happen to us all. Don’t think that this book is all about the good stuff – Pip acknowledges that ‘life isn’t always peachy’ and I think that she’s got the balance between the two just right. I really appreciate Pip’s honesty in this book, as she discusses so many things that have happened to her as examples, both good and bad, but she emphasises a need to think about how you perceive these things to be able to move on (or not). And to think about how they might be encouraging or inhibiting creativity.

“Movement is the key to happiness and creativity.”

Over the first few chapters there are various activities to think about who you are and where you’re at in terms of the creative process and productivity. I really enjoyed the section about getting out and about – I know that this is something that helps me when I have creative block, but Pip talks about building a morning walk into her routine and the impact that has had on her physical and mental wellbeing. We have recently been getting off the bus a few stops early and walking the rest of the way to work, and I notice a big difference when we don’t! When I went out the other week to collect elderflower to make cordial, I had such a lovely walk at about 8am and that day I really noticed how much more productive I was. So I’m thinking about trying to do this more often on my craft days. It was good to have space to think, and I know that I’m really bad at taking downtime – I tend to only do it when I’m forced to through illness. I have this thing where I want to make the most of every minute of the weekend, but I should really appreciate that it’s ok to rest up! This is something that Pip refers to at various points in the book – I must remember to take it on board.

I’m currently working on some of the exercises from chapter 4: be yourself. These involve a little bit of reflecting and thinking about who I am and what my mission statement might be. I used to really hate self-reflection. It used to (and sometimes can still) feel like a bit of a ticky box exercise, usually for some sort of work-related development task that doesn’t mean a lot. But since reading this (and attending Blogtacular) I have felt different about it in terms of me personally. It’s great to be able to do it for me, for a purpose. Not in a ‘what can I do for your company?’ kind of way.

“Creativity and ideas need practice”

Once the basics of enjoying nice times and really knowing how to get the best out of your time are covered, the rest of the chapters discuss opportunities to get creative. Pip shares loads of ideas of how to do this – finding new skills, making with friends, making new friends and collaborating – and there is a whole section at the back with some super project ideas. I find myself yet again thinking that I must learn how to crochet to be able to make a gorgeous blanket like the one on the cover!

The styling and design of the book is lovely, and the quotes dotted about the book are thought-provoking and inspiring. This one by Sigmund Freud (see below) really resonated with me, having discovered my love of making things once I had left my music teaching career. It took me a long, long time to come to terms with leaving that job behind, but I would never have got into doing what I do now if I hadn’t. This was the toughest thing at the time, but now I realise it was a really good thing to go through. Pip talks about small-scale changes that you can make to enhance your creativity (you don’t have to have a career change!) and how to create new opportunities for creativity. The chapter about doing it with your friends and getting out there and just doing it are really inspiring. There’s a LOT to think about in this book, but reflecting is good!

Each time I pick up this book, I take something new away from it. It’s not a book to read once and then let it gather dust on the shelf – it’s a book to be used, to be referred to, to share. A bit like creativity, really. It’s reassuring to know that the things I often feel are things that Pip often feels too! We have never met and we live on opposite sides of the planet, but (just as she does with her blog) she builds a connection through her book. To echo what Clare Bowditch says in the in the foreword, Pip builds a relationship with her readers as friends, and you feel like you know her a little better by the end. You feel like she might also know you too.

Craft for the Soul: how to get the most out of your creative life is published by Viking (part of Penguin Books Australia). At time of writing this post, I could not find out when this title will be released in the UK. I will update this if I find out – promise!

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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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