Share the lovely as you find it

ishtar olivera's crafts

A friend who knows how much I luuurve a creative course gave me a voucher for my Birthday last year towards one of my choosing, and I chose one by Holly Becker of decor8 and Leslie Shewring of A Creative Mint called Blogging Your Way. Leslie takes beautiful photographs and I've long been an admirer of Holly's lovely blog so fancied seeing what I could enjoy learning from those who have clearly mastered the blogging business.

Both Holly and Leslie shared generously and warmly of their talents and experience. It's not a technical course (although Holly's husband, Thorsten, was on hand to help those who had fundamental technical questions) but is aimed at encouraging students (over 200 of us) to think about what our blogs mean to us and what we want from them, how we express ourselves or might like to express ourselves, and the look and feel that best represents this for each. All of this was good and, mostly importantly, it reconfirmed that my little blog space fits me and represents me well, that the people I connect with in it are relatively few in number but oh so special to me and that I love it just the way it is. It did inspire me to finally find out how to make several of the little template tweaks I'd been wanting to do for ages and my new banner and a few layout changes are the result of this.

Holly is first and foremost a consummate professional blogger and lots of the great advice she offered was aimed at assisting those seeking to maximise their readership numbers, showcase their creations and inspirations, take advantage of social networking opportunities, or promote their businesses to do so more effectively. All this whilst remaining true to who they are. My blog is really about none of those things except the last, so I admit I often felt a bit like the odd girl at the party. This is no reflection on the course, I was comfy in that space.

For me one of the very best things about the whole experience was being introduced to some great blogs that I might not otherwise have encountered and engaging directly with some of my classmates, many of whom are very accomplished bloggers and delightful people. Sadly, I was not able to devote as much time as I might have liked to browsing and participating in all the forum chat but all in all I was more than satisfied with what I gained from the experience. In the final two weeks we were divided into smaller groups and asked to work together to support each other in achieving what we'd each set out to do. And finally, we were asked to select just five new favourites to share.

Well, those of you who've been visiting for a while know it's very difficult for me to choose favourites and I could not possibly choose just five in my own group (I'll post that list another day), so I went outside it... and these are my choices:

ishtar olivera :~ possibly one of the sweetest, most whimsical banners I've seen, as are Ishtar's beautiful illustrations. The image above is taken from one of her lovely crafty posts and her Flickr stream is well worth a browse... so pretty.

Lilie Green :~ beautiful, eclectic content, gorgeous look and feel and a self-confessed lover of sparkle... who can resist? Lilie is a jewellery artisan who has a sweet Etsy shop, a lovely About page and a great regular column called Green Loves amongst lots of other loveliness.

draw!pilgrim :~ Pilgrim is a graphic designer with a gorgeous, vintage inspired and very distinctive style, who lives in one of my favourite cities in the world, Melbourne. She does a great weekly visual roundup, and shares some of the beautiful corners of her home. So different to my own aesthetic (although she does share my love of purple nailpolish) but such lovely, lovely stuff... I'm sold.

flowing moments :~ Nathalie's beautiful images and calm, quiet space along with her lovely friendly warmth, draw me in and invite me to linger. She lives in Bordeaux in France, loves the ocean and the seashore and "the beauty and poetry"around her. It shows.

Jane Davenport :~ Jane's profession is surely one of the most unusual on the planet. She's an Artomologist. In fact the only, and therefore leading, Artomologist in the world. Let's just say that it probably needs to be seen to be understood but her lovely sense of humour, absolutely fantastic photographs and beautiful artwork are all reasons to visit, even if she didn't have a column called 'Sects in the City. I dare you to resist a peek...

Quite a mixed bag but I looked through each and every blog on that list of over 200 and these were definitely my five favourite not-in-my-group-new-to-me finds. I hope you might enjoy them too. 

And I also hope you have a very happy Monday!