Yay, I’ve been nominated by the lovely filliefanatic of Tiny Horse Talk for the Blogger Recognition Award! Thank you, filliefanatic. 🙂 Her blog is a treasure trove of creative inspiration, so you should absolutely check it out – I’m in awe of the miniatures she makes.
The Rules
- Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog
- Make a post about the award
- Give a brief recap of how your blog began
- Give two pieces of advice for new bloggers
- Select 15 other bloggers you wish to give the award to
- Comment on each blog, letting them know of their nomination and providing a link to the post.
The Origin Story
I started blogging in October 2012 as a way to share my crochet patterns with the world. Longtime readers may remember my blog was originally named “Cogaroo Crafts,” after my initials, which spell “COG.” However, this caused a whole lot of confusion when I tried to tell people the URL, so last year I changed it to Once Upon a Yarn. It’s crazy to think that I started blogging when I was 14, and now I’m in college. I guess it’s to be expected that my blogging style has changed a lot – I post more writing/fangirl stuff now than I used to, and I’m no longer terrified of posting pictures of myself on the Internet, haha.
Unsolicited Blogging Advice
Well, it’s sort of solicited, right? I don’t feel that I’m the most competent person to be giving advice, but here’s what I would have liked to hear when I started blogging.
- Make friends! Don’t be afraid to leave comments on other blogs. The blogging community is friendly and welcoming, and this is not only the best way to get more followers, but to make new friends. Also: be yourself! This sounds cheesy, but I had a lot more fun once I stopped trying to sound like other bloggers and embraced my dorky, verbose, fangirl self.
- Don’t be afraid to mess around with WordPress to figure out what works for you. (But don’t do what I did and change domain names twice in a year. That’s how I went from over 250 followers to 0.) There are tons of resources out there, but I mostly just learned from trial and error until I had a theme that looked fairly put together. You don’t have to be a professional graphic designer to have a classy looking blog. (Not to sound like a font snob, but no Comic Sans!)
And I may as well link you to my WordPress Public Service Announcement to try and save you the pain I went through a couple years ago when all my pictures disappeared. 😛
Nominees
I apologize, but it’s the weekend before finals and I don’t have the energy to nominate 15 blogs. I also don’t follow that many. So I’m going to nominate Grace from Doll Dimensions, who has one of the coolest and most inspirational blogs ever, and go for quality over quantity. 🙂
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Thank you so much for the nomination, filliefanatic! I’m honored, this was a lot of fun. 🙂
Do any of you have some blogging advice you’d like to share? I have so much still to learn!
Thank you for the kind words, you absolutely deserved this award! 😊
Aw, thank you filliefanatic! And you’re welcome! 😀
Congratulations on the award Claire! 🙂
And good advice. . . I think you’re quite right, as long as bloggers remember “be yourself” and experiment with settings / designs to make a blog that reflects that, they’ll be fine. For me it was timely advice as well: it’s a good reminder every once in a while, as it can be easy to forget the foundation and worry too much about this and that! I feel more relaxed now, so thanks for that. 😀
By the way, how are finals going? Well, I hope?
Thank you so much, River! Please consider yourself nominated too – I just didn’t know if you were still active on WordPress, otherwise I absolutely would have nominated you! 😀 I’m glad you thought it was good advice, it’s super cliché but has worked out okay for me so far. :} Yay for feeling more relaxed – that makes me happy!
Thanks for asking about finals – they’re over, and went super well, so I’m over the moon about that. 😀 Hope your spring is off to a great start!
You’re welcome!
And it’s very sweet of you to nominate me, thank you! 😊 I really appreciate it.
I’m glad to hear that finals went well, good job! Hope your spring is going beautifully too. 🌷
Hi Claire! I’m just now slowing down enough to get back into the blogging groove, and this is so sweet of you! I’ll definitely do the award soon! Thank you so so much! 🙂 I loved what you wrote, too….I totally agree about being yourself. I know I had a lot more fun when I realized I could giggle and fangirl a lot more on my blog than I could in real life. 😉 Thank you again!