Blog Make Over and Sign!!!

As I am sure you have noticed I gave myself a BLOG MAKE OVER!!!

I have been wanting to do this for a while, because my blog has changed so much since I started it in May. In May I was totally hooked on quilling and I didn't even have a Cricut, and while I still like to do quilling, this blog has become more of a Cricut blog...so I needed a new design that reflected that. I decided to tackle this myself and kill two birds with one stone. I wanted to make a sign that I can hang in my new craft space, and I wanted it to match my blog design.

So this is the awesome sign I made. It is 6x11.6. I love how it turned out. I love the purple tree. This has all the colors I love, but also has my favorite color purple. That is my very favorite tree and I love turtles. So this is very much ME.

Making it was the easy part. Getting good enough pictures of it to use for a blog graphics was harder. I had to do a lot of playing around with it to get this one which I liked the best for the main header picture. Then I had to change around the blog colors to match it. I love how that turned out.

Then I had to make brand new blog buttons. I am so SUPER happy with my blog button which you can grab from my sidebar. I just love how it turned out and it is so stinking pretty. If you want to display my button on your blog that would be great! Just grab it. I made buttons just like it for my Designers and Guest Designers on my challenges and they turned out just as cute. I still can't believe that I made that button.

Hope you enjoy the new look. I am really loving it and excited about it. The next time I need business cards printed I will giving my printer the button image to put that on one side of my card. My current cards matched my old blog design.

I also simplified a few things. I took the Etsy shop off my side bar and am simply linking it at the top under the Purchase Tab. I don't think I was getting much business from this blog anyone since my visitors are fellow crafters, most of that has come from the Etsy site. I also put a drop down menu for my labels/categories. It really cleans up the side bar. I did the same with my blog archive. With about 500 posts now and at least 30-50 per month usually that gets very cluttered.

I added a new Q&A page at the top in my row of pages...just a common place where anyone can post questions they might have and it will be easier for me to answer them since my posts tend to get buried fast.

Oh yes, and on my main page now there will only display my most recent 8 posts...so to see more click older. I think my blog was loading too slowly because of how much was on it and it was frustrating.

What else...yes my new craft space is pretty much done. So look out for the video tour this week!

Let me know your feedback on my new design. Hope you enjoy!