Useful bloggy stuff...

You know Pinterest right? Lots of gorgeous images of hazy summer days, beautiful continental back street cafes, cake, cute kittens, incredible art, crafts and interiors I could only dream of reproducing, more cake, even more cute kittens, some inspirational quotes, designer outfits, famous people wearing designer outfits, some famous people wearing no outfits at all... and so on. Oh, did I mention kittens? And cake?

But there is more to Pinterest than kittens and cake. Honest.

I can happily spend an entire Sunday afternoon/football match/episode of Top Gear scrolling through pin boards repinning anything that catches my eye. Some of it is even quite useful (recipes, craft, DIY's etc). I began one board 'Useful Bloggy Stuff' a few months back. It's packed full of hints and tips on improving your blog, making it pretty and using social media (including Pinterest) as a way to promote it effectively.
Yesterday I thought it might be a good idea to actually apply some of the tips and pretty up my blog a bit.

The first thing I did was take a fresh look at my template - I have removed the background image, adjusted the column widths slightly, changed the font to one that is a bit easier to read (I loved the curly 'Crafty Girls' font but it is quite difficult to read, worse on some browsers than others!) and simplified things by using only 2 fonts - one for the actual posts and something a bit more fancy for the titles, tabs and side bar.

Then I tidied up the side bar - getting rid of all the different social media buttons and adding some funky matching buttons instead. Can you see them at the top of my side bar? aren't they a bit cute? Now it's easy peasy to click through and follow my facebook, twitter and pinterest accounts or subscribe to the RSS feed.  There's room for another so who knows - I may start a YouTube channel next ;-)  You can find loads of different styles of buttons (including hearts and stars) in many colours to download for free at Bourne Creative along with basic HTML coding to add them to your blog.

Another great piece of coding I found was pinned from a lovely blog called Something Swanky - this one is what is known as a Blogger Hack - basically some clever person has taken a popular and useful Wordpress widget and coded it for use on Blogger blogs. This one is for the horizontal bar running across the top of the blog (look above this post) and showcases recent posts with clickable pictures. Cool, huh?




Finally (and this is the best one!) I have added a 'Pin It' button that appears over any picture on my blog and allows other people to pin what they like to their own boards!
Go on try it - let your mouse hover over the image, click on the 'P' and you are ready to add it to your own pinboard!
Again, just a simple bit of HTML applied in the right part of the template coding from KEVINANDAMANDA.COM and now my blog can fully join in the Pinterest party!!

Source: kevinandamanda.com via Anthea on Pinterest

There are a few more tweaks I still want to do - I love this idea from Living, Laughing and Loving. She has created cute co-ordinated side bar titles to really tie her blog design together. I also want to have a go at creating a 'library' of tutorials and recipes like this one from The Crafty CPA .

I'm sure I will find more tweaks to try as my 'Useful Bloggy Stuff' pinboard grows. But one thing at a time :-)

Do you have a blog? Fancy having a go at some of these tweaks? Why not turn your little corner of the internet into something a bit more special. (Please remember to back up your blog before you start. Just in case)  If you do please let me know - so we can all pop over and 'ahhhhhh' at your gorgeous blog!