A New Year, A New Look

[Before I go into more detail about my site's new look, I should mention that the name of  my business has officially been changed from Happy Place, to Happy Place Design Studio! I gave a lot of thought as to whether or not I wanted to scrap the name altogether, but ultimately my reasons for choosing it in the first place just haven't changed. At the same time, I always kind of felt like it was missing something that reflected the creative nature of my business, and Design Studio just seemed fitting! So welcome to the newly renovated HAPPY PLACE DESIGN STUDIO! Thanks for stopping by :) ]

Over the summer, I decided it was time to update the look and function of my blog. To be honest, although Facebook will always be a good place to share my work, it's becoming increasingly difficult to get page views and make sales, which isn't my sole concern, but pretty critical in keeping Happy Place DS afloat.  I also felt like I just wasn't using my blog/website to its full potential, and that if I could spend a little time improving it (both in it's function and appearance), it could be an invaluable tool in the success of my business.

Because Blogger was the only platform I was vaguely familiar with (and I was pretty adamant about taking on this project myself), I really wanted to stick with what I knew.  The big problem that I ran into was that Blogger is very difficult to customize if you don't know what you're doing. And I definitely DID NOT know what I was doing. I had a very clear idea HOW I wanted everything to look. I was just clueless as to HOW to make it happen. At one point I declared I was just going to learn how to code the entire website by myself and took a trip to the library to sign out some books on the subject! :|  HA! At any rate, I got over my frustration, and challenged myself to figuring out just one small thing everyday. Adding a link to a navigation bar button, organizing my furniture portfolio into a grid, creating a background with a border! It took me literally 8 hours just to figure out how to add a simple contact form! But, with the help of many You Tube videos, and FB chats with my brother in Malaysia, I fumbled my way through it, and after 6 months, even though I could probably never explain how I did it, I now have a site that I'm pretty darn proud of!

First and foremost, I wanted to create a central location for my business where I could not only blog and get into more detail then I'm really able to on Facebook, about the projects I'm currently working on, but also keep a visual portfolio of my work, and have links to the other social media outlets that I use regularly (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest) as well as my Etsy store where I will be selling my smaller handmade items, such as pillows and hand painted signs. I still plan to be very active on Facebook but I will mostly just use it to notify you as new things become available, new blogs are published, etc. There won't be a lot of info in these posts--just a brief description and a link back to this site for more details. More than anything I wanted the site to be user friendly and easy to navigate. I hope I've achieved that!

As for the look of my new site design, I just wanted something that was clean, simple, graphic and colourful. I logged many hours on PicMonkey editing photos, laying out graphics, and just working out every little detail of each blog element. I'm sure I will continue making tweaks over time, but for now it feels like a perfect representation of the Happy Place DS aesthetic :)

I hope you enjoy clicking through my new site. A good place to start is my ABOUT page which you can find in the navigation bar above. Please leave a comment to let me know you were here :)