My website is finished!

I have finished my website, I like the way it looks although I might adjust a few more times. I never know when i'm going to be finished because I keep noticing details that I need to amend. My friend Bryt told me to finish as I kept asking her how it looked and she didn't notice anything different each time. I have showed almost everyone in the library and will show John tomorrow morning. 

 Home Page

About

Wellbeing

DIY

Blog

Blogging hell

Im getting really frustrated trying to build my website. I want to have a menu with home, about, wellbeing and DIY. But when I try to insert just the wellbeing content from the blog onto the wellbeing page it inserts the entire blog. It does not allow to have specific posts on each page, so essentially I have the entire 6 posts across three pages. I am not seeing John until tomorrow morning and it is too late to email...

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I've had an idea. I have started with a blank page and manually added the feature image of each post, and the title with a paragraph of content. This way I can have the exact content on each page so it is easier for my visitors to navigate and reach the content they want when there are more and more posts over time. I can set the images as links to the specific post with the URL. 

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... so when I tried to set the images as links it sent through to my wix editing page, I have made sure the URL is from the published version and it still redirects to the editor. I really dont know why this would be happening, I otherwise have all my content on my blog and just need these links to work. It can wait until the morning but I was really hoping to show John the finished version. 

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After one last try I finally fixed it. I added in buttons and a link in a new window, problem solved!

Change of heart

I have been working on my website tirelessly, I am finding the process grueling at times as once I feel I have perfected an aspect of my site, I realise the new adjustments have caused a butterfly effect somewhere else on the site. However I am started to feel very excited about my project coming together, it has been hard to visualise the final outcome as I have been working on individual elements that cannot come together until it is all placed on the site. 

I have had a major change of heart about the header image I created. I feel it looks amateur in comparison to my images and realise the font is not what I wanted. instead of creating a new header on photoshop I decided to just try out the fonts and shapes on WIX. 

I have chosen a light grey shade for my text and header as I found black too intense, the soft grey works well for me. 

I much prefer the simplicity of this font but feel it needs a logo, while i liked the symbols i had there were probably one to many. 

Here i tried three little symbols that looked like stencils of crystals, however it still wasn't working so I tried something else.

Here it is, my final header. I think its minimal yet effective, I like the shape I found, it looks like a new age symbol to me. I am going to try moving the menu bar above the header and see how that looks. 

Post Production

I have edited all of the images for my website, I feel they look so much more professional and I am glad I had confidence to rely on my editing skills.

These are my favourite images I'm really pleased with how they look finished. The adjustments were actually quite small. I mainly adjusted the colour levels, brightness, contrast and exposure. 

RMS Make-up Shoot

I was trying to find a model and make-up artist or alternatively a photographer who could shoot the make-up on myself. I was able to ask Chelsea to create a make-up look with the products and photograph the look on me. 

Although the shoot was left until very late and I was anxious about the project on a whole, we had a really good time both when applying the make-up and in the photography studio. 

I showed Chelsea the products and talked her through what sort of look I wanted, clean, natural, gloss, healthy. She was excited to try the products as had never used organic make-up before, saying she was surprised with how well they preformed.

At first we tried a few close ups, although I wasn't really happy with the crop and how my face looked that close up.

 I am so pleased with how the make-up looked, I though the contour may have been a little strong looking in the mirror but actually it picked up well on camera. I am glad I asked Chelsea to help with the make-up, she really understood what look I was asking for and I think she's a really skilled make-up artist.

 These four images are my favourite , I think I will choose one of these for the RMS beauty article.

Macro Lens

The second half of the shoot was not so successful, I had cream products on my eyelids so was asked to look down for the images, while I wanted to see what she was capturing, chelsea wanted to capture the image without having to amend them. I did not see these images until after and we were at the end of the studio booking.

I wanted the images closer really, I took some images of chelsea to show her how I wanted them, but didn't get as close.

 I don't think these images look particularly great so do not think I will be using them.

Overall a successful shoot, myself and chelsea made a good team, while the macro photography didn't work, i feel there are still some good images to use on my blog. 

Final RMS make-up still life

I got into the still life studio after it being closed for a week and was shocked to see a brand new table. My first worry was continuity, all my images have been shot on a matte table and the new table has a gloss finish. While I actually prefer this table my images will look different. At this stage of the project I don't have time to re-shoot, or the studio booking. 

Although I was thrown off with the new table I had a really good shoot. I felt I was getting the images I needed quickly but was by no means rushing the process. I was content with the lighting and felt at ease even though time is short. 

 The first set of images I took I noticed after that the stickers on the boxes looked distracting, so i turned them round and felt the image looked more professional and clean.

 I love the simplicity of the white boxes and don't think the images look to bare or empty. I feel I have achieved the minimal look. 

I think I will use one of these images as the feature image as I think its powerful but simple. 

Products

Looking at these images I can see my skills have improved, I enjoy looking at this image and the minimalism, before when I tried shooting the products I felt the images looked boring and lacked substance, but this image works for me. 

I then took pictures of the products together and separately to sort of warm up and make sure the lighting was good. 

 I added some opaline and aura quartz to the set up, I didn't want to use crystals with intense colours as it might have distracted from the colour of the product.

 I tried out adding in some cardboard shred, I realised I'd gone too far after taking a few images and returned to take images of what i'd already shot to make sure I had enough images as I do not have time to re-shoot.

Crystal Healing

I wanted to include a crystal of the week feature in my blog articles, this was something I had proposed in the early stages, but after attempting to shoot the crystals and feeling unsuccessful  this idea took a back seat. 

Here is an example of what I mean...

The images didn't work for me, they just look thrown together. I tired to create a mood around the crystal, for amethyst it is tranquil and aids sleep so i photographed it with the lavender but feel it was unsuccessful. 

After a meeting with Emma, she suggested creating moods through images of models, not marco shots. I tried out shooting the crystals again, but this time on a body. It made sense as the crystals are placed on the body for direct healing, so shooting them on a table wasn't the way to show this. 

I think the images look good because I used a model with such a small stomach, I would have preferred to have used a model that better represents my readers but i feel the image would have probably been criticised if I didn't pull the photography off. This image doesn't work for me personally because I feel I have seen images like this everywhere in general advertisement. But I trust emma judgement, I have showed a few of my peers the images and had positive feedback, so will be using one of these images to accompany my crystal healing post.