Long time no blog! I’m getting a bit too used to saying that but this time there’s an actual result from the long break – a brand new blog design! I kind of sat and had a think recently about what the heck I’m doing online. For a while now I’ve sort of followed my own standard formula – write blogs, take pictures in outfits sent to me by brands, link to the outfits, post them on Instagram, publicise my new blogs and so on an so forth. I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing rather than going through the motions. I wasn’t really thinking about whether my blog and “Skylish” as a whole was a true representation of me – as I currently am – a girl in my 20s who likes to write, eat, go to the gym, find out cool stuff about the world and occasionally tun up.
I’m still rewriting my formula. And I wanted to start off a fresh start with a brand new blog design. Many of you will know that I actually taught myself to code basic HTML/CSS/PHP at the ripe old age of 10! For a while in my mid-teens I would sell coded designs to customers. But when I started university my love for this sort of fell out of the picture and so my knowledge of coding and webdesign is similarly stuck back 5 years or so in the past. As much as I wanted to hold onto being the only person to ever create a design for this blog – I know my knowledge is just no longer good enough to code and design something like what you see here. But – I’m a grown adult now, and I don’t mind paying someone to hep me out when it comes to achieving my goals. So that’s what you see here – a crisp, responsive and no longer ancient design. There are still some tweaks to be made – but it’s definitely more or less there.. and I’m pretty excited about it.
Now – with that new design out of the way, you may be wondering how much of my “Skylish” formula I’ve actually rewritten. What is really going to change here? So here we go…
- More frequent posts – One post a week shouldn’t be so difficult, and honestly, it isn’t. But the weekend happens, sleep must happen and then all of a sudden it’s Sunday night and you’re getting ready for the week ahead. Essentially, I need to go back to being disciplined
- Refocusing back on what I care about – If you strip away all things social media and all things #ad; #gifted, I am a writer at heart. Sometimes when I write here, the posts are just meant to be light hearted. But a lot of the time I really want to encourage some thought and/or share my experiences and offer advice to women just like me. I don’t want to get lost in likes and free things just “because”, it makes it easy to forget the “why”. This means not only more thoughtful blogging but also more thoughtful collaborations (and honestly, I’ve got some cool ones coming up!) After all, I am blessed to be the position that I can afford to be selective with my choices, so I’ll utilise that
- Taking it back to being a hobby To be honest, since I’ve been more thoughtful about what I put online and not stressing too much over the little details, I’ve been enjoying it all a lot more. It’s one of the reasons I started up Skylish Fit – I stripped things back to the bare bones and thought, actually, what do I want to do? I wanted to make a fitness page – so I did it. Now that’s not to mean I won’t take my blog seriously, not at all; but I want it to be something I enjoy and am passionate about rather than something I feel I have to always count revenues from
- More of the same – More of what has seasoned Skylish over the years. Thoughtful posts, my life, some funny ish and some style here and there too
TL;DR: More creativity, more to make you think, less stressing. Happiness all around!
Anyhow – I hope you all like this new layout and a new vision for Skylish! There are still a few tweaks to make over here to get the new design perfect, but I’ll be making them over the coming weeks.
I’m excited for this fresh start and what better time than H2 to get things kicking…
If there’s anything you’d like to see here – let me know. Otherwise – have a fab week. 🙂
Top: Zara NYC
Photography Marianna Olaleye