Stress!

Today has been the most stressful day of my entire FMP process. The past week people have been having meltdowns and panicking however I have been fine.. until today. I was in the library doing some last minute touch ups when my laptop decides to break on me. All of a sudden lines appeared on my laptop and it just turned off. My first reaction was to go to the Apple shop to see if they could do anything but by the time I had got there it was too late to see someone. At this point I was walking back to the library with my broken laptop in my hand and tears falling down my face with my brother and mum on the phone telling me to not panic. The only thing going through my mind was that my deadlines were a couple of days away and my work was all on my laptop. Luckily for me, I had emailed one piece of work to myself but because I was working on my evaluation, I had not backed it up and that was the only thing I was really worried about. I was so thankful to myself for deciding to do an online project because all of my work was already live on my blog so I wasn't able to lose that, it was just my essays.

From this experience today, I have learned to ALWAYS back up my work because you never know what is going to happen. Tomorrow morning I am going to go back to the Apple store and hopefully they will be able to fix my laptop .. which I have so much hate for at the moment.

Bad Quality Pictures

I had a blog post idea yesterday that was going to tell students in Southampton a cheap place to go for cocktails with friends, family or even a date. I had work during the day so had planned to go in the evening and once I had got ready to go, we went to take some pictures in my room however the lighting was horrific. Everything looked yellow and fuzzy so I tried to play around with the camera settings however nothing was working so I decided to abandon the idea. Next time I attempt to take any pictures in the evening in my room, I am going to get and get old of a ring light or some other kind of lighting to help. Luckily for me, I am going back to the cocktail bar next week so I will just mention it in that post instead.

Writers block

Recently I have been lacking ideas for my blog. Normally my blog ideas just come to me however all I can think of are OOTD posts. I don’t want to keep posting just fashion posts because I want my blog to be a good mixture of each category. I’ve been looking at my favourite blogger – Samantha Maria, but her posts are primarily fashion. This has got me thinking that maybe I should focus just on one category and because I enjoy the OOTD post so much, maybe I should just focus on fashion. I do want to keep talking about beauty products though because that is where my passion originally came from for this blog. Part of my also thinks that I should take a break from blogging but then I may fall behind schedule. I have got a work placement coming up soon so maybe that would the perfect opportunity for me to take a step back.

I read on the Anna Edit not too long ago that she took a month out from blogging and she said that

"I love what I do, so it wasn’t that I needed a break; more just a chance to press reset and return with some juice in the ol’ battery. " 

https://www.theannaedit.com/what-i-learnt-from-taking-a-month-off-from-blogging/ 


 I feel like I should do the same. The consequence will be that I stop blogging sooner than planned. I was planning on posting three times a week, consistently from the beginning of march (which I have been sticking to) right up until the deadline.

The reality now is that I may stop posting about two weeks before the hand in, however this may work out for the best as it will give me time to work on my evaluation and any other little bits I have to do.

Rainy Beach Day

Today I planned to go to Bournemouth beach to shoot an OOTD post. The weather had been hit and miss however it did say that it wasn’t going to rain until the evening. I was scheduled to leave at 1 pm because my photographer was busy until then however we ended up leaving later than planned. When we got to Bournemouth, we actually ended up in the wrong place. At first I was thinking we should just stay where we were and work with what we have however my gut was telling me to go the place I originally planned. Once we got there and parked the car, it started to rain a little so we decided to go and get some lunch first and that way we would be sheltered. We decided to go into Zizzi’s because I had never been and then I found out that they offer up to 40% student discount! I used my initiative and decided to mention that in the blog post I had planned for the day. Once we had finished eating the rain had slowed down so we made our way towards the gardens. When I visited Bournemouth last time, I walked through the gardens and they were beautiful so I thought that they would be the perfect location for some pictures. We got a couple but then it started to rain again so I decided to head to the arcade. The vibe inside the arcade was so cool so we decided to get some pictures in there too. Although the lighting wasn’t the best, it gave the pictures more of a vintage feel, you could tell we were in an arcade. By this time the shops had closed so there wasn’t much more to do so we decided to head back home. Although the day didn’t go to plan, I still enjoyed it and am happy with the pictures and if anything, it gives others ideas as to what to do when it’s raining in Bournemouth. If I were to do this again I would try and go on a day with better weather and leave earlier. I would also come up with a backup plan so we would have more indoor places to go to.

Tutorial Feedback

Today I had a group tutorial where I presented my work so far to Elizabeth, Anna and Emma. At first I was nervous to present my project so far after hearing and looking at everyone elses work, because mine was so different. Blogging is something I am passionate about and enjoy doing to I stick to my decision of doing this. I personally think that the future is digital so I think the way forward is to create something online.

Change in blogging days

Whilst researching for another project, I found that the best days to post online are Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I have been posting on these days however because I work all day on a Saturday, I don’t really get the time to properly promote my new content. This is why I have decided to post on a Sunday instead. I still work all day on Sundays however because we close earlier, it gives me more time during the day to share my new post.

I have also found through this process so far that because I post three times a week, it only gives me two days to promote that piece of work before I have to move onto the next one. Sometimes I feel like it would be better to post twice a week instead and that way I would have more posts planned in time and I would be able to give them the time they need to be promoted. I may alternate some weeks by posting twice or three times to see if it makes much of a difference but that I don’t want to confuse followers who know the days I post on.

When it comes to promoting, I’ve found that twitter is the best app for me, some viewers do some from my Instagram but not as many compared to my twitter account. I have created a twitter account purely dedicated to the blog where I follow others bloggers and whenever I publish a new post, I use the relevant hashtags. As there is a blogging community, other bloggers tend to retweet my link so that my content gets viewed by a wider audience.

NEW LOGO

My friend who said would help with my new logo has been quite busy recently and I didn't want to keep bothering her so I've decided to just make my new logo by myself.

I went onto DaFont.com to look at the fonts they had until I found a couple I liked. These are the ones I managed to narrow down.