Tips for New Bloggers Archives * Style Chicks

SMART DIVAS: Fashionably Planning with Abrie James 2018 Planner Book

January 30, 2018 · 6 Comments

There’s precedent for being fashionably late, but there’s no excuse for “fashionably forgetful”. We juggle many roles and must plan accordingly. Nothing beats prepping for upcoming events like a visual spread of the entire week or month, especially when starting a business or blog, planning a wedding or otherwise keeping numerous appointments per week including managing a busy household. And our favorite new tool to schedule our professional and personal lives is the Abrie James 2018 Planner Book: a fashionable, chic planner that looks so good you’ll want to carry it everywhere.

The Abrie James 2018 Planner

WHY A FASHIONABLE PLANNER

When was the last time someone complimented your day planner?

For me, it was my 8th grade Lisa Frank homework planner. No shade on Lisa Frank, for she’s the undisputed, reigning queen of aiding tween girls to get stuff done. But it seems like we grew up and most planners didn’t.

The majority of planners aren’t much more sophisticated in appearance or function beyond that which we used to remember when to bring our gym uniform and for keeping track of Algebra homework due dates. And, these “whimsical” patterned planners look silly in the hands of any woman who wants to be taken seriously while actively adulting.

Close up detail on the Abrie James planner cover

Most appointment books are either stodgy, pretentious, boring leatherette books or have overly kitschy or froofy patterns. Neither will do. When a client looks at your attire, including your accessories, what do they see? I want clients to find me elegant, creative, reliable, innovative and intelligent. Why should my weekly planner look out of place with that image? Abrie James appointment books are inspired by fashionable runway looks and come in colors and patterns of a feminine, fashionable, creative, stylish and intelligent grown-up.

Abrie James planners are fashionable, useful and fun to use

THE ABRIE JAMES PLANNER AESTHETIC

My Abrie James planner matches much of my work attire. It comes in shades of deep grey and black, with a pop of feminine yet sophisticated rose-colored 2018 text. Other Abrie James planners have elegant graffiti, colorful lines, marbles, and metallics.

Abrie James planner

But don’t judge an appointment book entirely by its’ cover, no matter how fashionable it may be. Abrie James Planners help organize tasks to the tune of the needs of a busy adult, and if I may say, even us A-Types.

The Abrie James Planner cover shades of black, gray and rose compliment my wardrobe

WHY A PAPER PLANNER BOOK IS LIFE-OPTIMIZING MUST-HAVE

Recording appointments on tablets and phones are useful for short-term reminder prompts of where we have to be and when. But these do little for helping us visualize our time or to prepare for these events. A paper planner helps us do just that.

ABRIE JAMES DESIGN FEATURES

LAYOUT

Durable divider tabs separate each month’s section for quick-access

Divider tabs by month

MONTHLY VIEW Each month has a two-page overview with large spaces for multiple items, detailed explanations, and instructions

View one month as seen on two pages of the highly attractive and useful Abrie James Planner

A month at a glance

WEEKLY VIEW Each week is spread over two pages, with a full length lined sections per day that give enough room for planning, scheduling or journaling in detail. I find this daily journal section ideal for keeping personal and private goals separate from business schedules. It’s a good spot for detailing personal fitness or beauty goals such as water drinking, exercise and beauty treatment schedule for hair or skin, and other personal goals.

Week at a glance section has ruled lines for detailed instructions or journal entries

OVERVIEW Each month has a full page blank lined paged for reviews, overviews, goals, journaling, or even sketches and schematics.

Full page monthly review

SUMMARY SECTIONS for decisive action

CONSTRUCTION

STURDY CONSTRUCTION strong black poly cover that’s more rigid than other planners while being flexible enough to fit into your bag.
THREE YEAR OVERVIEW (2018-2020) for long-term planning
PERFECT SIZE At 8.5 x 11 the planner fits into a laptop case, briefcase, purse, tote, or backpack or bookbag.

Fits easily in a briefcase, laptop case, backpack or tote

BLEED-RESISTANT ACID-FREE HIGH-QUALITY PAPER: Not only is the feel of this paper lovely, but it resists pen ink bleed, including permanent bullet journaling markers, which not only makes for cleaner writing but less fade.

Paper won’t bleed or fade, even with Bullet Journal markers

UNIQUE SECTIONS IN DETAIL

GRATITUDE SECTION

When we were young, our father said to us “How happy you are in life is directly related to how appreciative you are“. I’ve found this to be very true. But as a busy person who always has a to-do list longer than my arm, it’s difficult to pause and reflect on the good things, accomplishments and the people who were involved in them.

This planner enhances gratitude in two ways: with a section at the end of each month for writing down the things we are grateful for and a lovely set of thank you notes. In a world of memes, texts, and emails, a handwritten thank you note is a lost art, but an important one to best sustain personal and business relationships.

A set of thank you notes made of quality paper with versatile gold foil design

Thank you note set

Using this planner to contemplate areas of your life to be grateful, such as a kind or encouraging word from a friend, a favor done, an opportunity offered, a mentors’ advice, or for a colleague, friend or serviceperson who went the extra mile for you, is a worthwhile investment in both them and yourself.

A section each month devoted to Gratitude

The included Thank You note set makes it easy to act on what is written in the Gratitude section

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

I also liked the inspirational quotes along the page footers, including words of wisdom ranging from the Ancient Greek Philosophers to Robin Williams.

Inspirational quotes appear along the page footers

Different inspirational quotes appear on each page

A PLANNER HELPS TO ACTUATE ONESELF FOR DECISIVE ACTION

Feel like a flip-flopper when it comes to making big decisions?

Many of us organize tasks by the Bullet Journal method. Prior to Bullet Journaling, GTD, AKA the Getting Things Done method, as popular. According to David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, the critical success factor to GTD accomplishment is what he calls “The Weekly Review”.

The Weekly Review consists of an analog review of all to-do lists and agendas on a weekly basis, where one gathers and processes all of their stuff, reviews their system and updates lists, revising and cleaning out old items, and moves forward. This Weekly Review helps us make decisive, quick decisions because we have clearly in mind what’s needed to advance our agendas.

Regardless of the method used, I find the Abrie James organizer an outstanding tool in this capacity.

The planner comes in a heavyweight, attractive gift box

ABOUT THE DESIGNER

Abrie James Founder Crystal Sides is a working mom of two who created a fashionable line of planners for the A-type Organized Divas amongst us who plan and do all the things we can pack into our hectic schedules. She also designed a line of accessories that are bound to kick-start your creative flow while making your meetings more productive and fun!

Abrie James Planners multi-task for professional and personal life planning

CONCLUSION

A fashionable and elegant way to convey your professionalism without compromising your style, the Abrie James 2018 Monthly Weekly Planner Appointment Book helps optimize your schedule with the efficiency of GTD planning combined with the inspirational flow of Bullet Journaling all in a quality paper, durable, stylish journal that easily fits into a briefcase, laptop case, or tote bag.

Abrie James 2018 Planner for all your personal and professional needs

WHERE TO BUY IT

Find the Abrie James 2018 Planner Book at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078RWKGL7

Style Chicks received Abrie James 2018 Planner Book in exchange for our unbiased review and received compensation for our time and effort. However, our experience with the product and the opinions expressed in this review are 100% ours.

Starting Your Own Beauty Blog: Pixly Cell Phone Camera Accessory Bundle

September 1, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Let’s make one thing clear about starting a beauty blog: good photos will make or break your blog.

Pixly Cell Phone Camera Accessory Bundle

iPhone Photography is fantastic. Lyn and I try to hone our iPhonography skills through Youtube tutorials and good old fashioned practice as often as we can. Frequently we take time after lunch and after work to take a stroll with the purpose of getting better at iPhonography. When you start your beauty blog, you will likely be using your cell phone to photograph swatches and looks of the day. Eventually, if your blog does well, you will invest in a DSLR camera, but until then, it is a good idea to hone your skills on taking sharp, quality iPhone shots.

Since I don’t always have my DSLR with me, I was very happy to try out the Pixly Cell Phone Camera Accessory Bundle. This highly affordable bundle will exponentially increase the quality of your pictures. Just think of how well your blog will start doing if the quality of your pictures increases – overnight!

My biggest problem with taking pictures with my iPhone is that I accidentally move the camera as I take the picture. As light a touch as I exert, somehow I frequently end up jarring the phone just enough to make the picture blurry. This kit comes with a truly fantastic tripod to stabilize the picture It has telescopic legs so that you can adjust it to the correct height. It is easy to slide your phone in securely, and it won’t scratch your phone, as some other tripods I have tried have done. If you are taking a picture of a product, this tripod works great, as you can zoom, focus, or change the filter, so the shot is exactly the way you want it. The feet are sturdy and won’t slide around, so you don’t have to worry about the whole thing moving. There is a swivel mount on the camera, so you can tilt and angle the phone to get the perfect shot.

My second favorite part is the Bluetooth Camera Remote Shutter. If you REALLY want to make sure that you won’t get a blurry shot, this is perfect. It pairs with your phone easily and allows you to take a step back to make sure the shot is just right. It’s also great for makeup selfies or Outfit of the Day shots!

It also comes with three lenses: Macro, Fisheye, and Wide Angle. We’ve come to be reliant on apps to create these angles, but it is best to create them in the original shot. You can tweak from there, but start with the raw shot and add if needed via app. These connect easily with the universal lens clip, which fits over the camera but doesn’t occlude or lay shadows on the shot. It is also nicely padded so it doesn’t scratch your phone. And since it is universal, it fits on any phone. The lenses and the clip come in a nice fabric case that easily fits in your purse, so you can always be ready!

As much as I rely on my DSLR, I am really happy to have this kit. If you are just starting out with your blog, it is a very worthwhile small investment into getting the excellent pictures you need for your blog!

Find it at Amazon.

Pixly Cell Phone Camera Accessory Bundle

I received this item for testing and review purposes. If you have any questions about my experience with it, leave it in the comments section below, and I’ll do my best to answer it!

Your New Beauty Blog: Ohuhu Laptop Desk

August 17, 2016 · Leave a Comment

To have a successful blog, it is absolutely imperative to have When you first start out your blog, you will probably be using your phone camera for pictures. That is perfectly fine when you are getting started, but when it comes time to grow your blog, or if you want to look professional from the beginning, you will want to explore the concept of camera tethering.

In short, Camera Tethering is hooking up a digital camera to your laptop so that you can see the image on a large monitor as you take it. It saves time and produces a far better picture. If you use Adobe Illustrator, you can even process pictures as you go. It really brings you to the next level of blog photography.

Ohuhu Laptop Desk

However, finding a good setup for camera tethering is tricky. That is why I like the Ohuhu Laptop Desk. It is a laptop desk on wheels, with a large and secure section for your laptop, and a separate smaller section for your camera. Once you attach the camera to the laptop, you can see if the picture is framed on the laptop screen, and then you can take the shot. Once you take the picture, you can easily examine it to make sure it is how you intended it to look, and then make any adjustments needed.

Each piece of the desk also angles, so if you are at an odd angle, then you can adjust the table part of the desk pieces so you can see the screen clearly. The stand is also adjustable, so if you need the camera or desk to be higher or lower, that is no problem at all.

The package comes with all the pieces needed to assemble the desk, including a screwdriver. I assembled it in less than 45 minutes.

I’m quite glad to have this desk, as tethering on a fixed, non-adjustable desk was getting to be a bit of a pain.

Find it at Amazon.

I received this product in exchange for testing and review purposes. If you have any questions about my experience with it, leave it in the comments section below, and I’ll do my best to answer it!

Your New Beauty Blog: Project Management with ProjectPlace

April 25, 2016 · Leave a Comment

We’re continuing our series on tips for starting your new beauty, lifestyle, and/or fashion blog. Hopefully now you have firmly in mind your vision for your blog and your future goals. Now it’s time to get started!

So…what’s the first step in getting started?

If you want a lively, successful blog, it is likely that sooner or later you will have to take on a team. Writing articles, scheduling, taking photographs – it is a lot of work and your strengths may not play to all of those points. Figure out who you want your team to be. Do you want to take on staff? Do you want to work with friends? Either way, you are going to need a way to collaborate with your team members.

After having tried many Team Management software programs and apps over the years, I learned about and have come to really like ProjectPlace. It allows you to break down each series, article, promotion, etc. into steps and it lets your team know who is responsible for what and when the deadline is.

There are several nice features about ProjectPlace. The main one is the flexibility. It provides you with a framework of core Team Management action items. You can take that framework and use it however is best for your team. Let’s take a look at some of the features to better explain what that means:

My Overview

This is one of my favorite features. When you are working with a team, ultimately you only care about what YOU have to do. Yes, you want to see the whole project succeed, but if you have built a great team that you trust, then you only have to worry about your portion of the work. When you log into ProjectPlace, the first tab that opens is My Overview. This is the screen that tells you what you need to do right now, what is pending, and what your future projects are. The left side of the screen has two tabs: My Work and Done. My Work lets you organize your time: what you need to do today, what you are doing tomorrow, and what you are doing later. You can add tasks, add details, make notes about your progress, or jot down ideas for something you have to do tomorrow. And then there is the blissful moment that you move things to your Done tab, and it is off your list!
My Projects takes up the right side of the screen. It allows you to break down projects into an extremely detailed plan. This is where you assign team members to tasks and check in on progress. You can change details at any time: perhaps an article took on a different angle, a deadline shifted, or you have to shuffle responsibilities between people. This is easy to do. If you are like me and you are always feeling like you forgot something, My Projects is fantastic because it lets you break down a project into such finite detail that any forgotten detail becomes obvious. It will be a real weight off of your mind.

Pending Projects

Running an active blog means planning not just days but months ahead. This is why “Pending Projects” is a great tool. It is the tab located next to My Overview and it contains all the projects you are juggling at once. If you make full use of this great tool, you will have enough projects in there that you will have to use the search feature, and I found that it is excellent for finding projects easily. It is also nice that you can form ideas slowly before assigning people or deadlines. As soon as you come up with an idea, start flushing it out and it will come together quicker than you think. It really is nice to take a look at your blossoming idea and realize it is ready to be turned into a fully formed project.

Boards

This is where you monitor the whole of a project. It allows you to see your progress in a highly visual way that isn’t inundating, breaking down projects into small, easy to digest tasks. It also gives an overview of what has been done already, thus giving you a quick sense of where you are in the stream of the project, all at a glance.

Notifications

If you are assigned a new task or someone else has finished the task before yours, you get a nice little notification up in the right hand corner of the screen. Easy and manageable.

Does all this sound complicated? It really isn’t. In fact, ProjectPlace makes it incredibly simple, and if for some reason you are still stuck, it has little bubbles on the screen that take you through what each section does until you get the hang of it, which will be fast.

I highly recommend ProjectPlace if you decide to work with a team from the beginning of your blog. It also gives you the ability to work with a team that is scattered all over. Have a friend in Paris who is an amazing photographer? No reason to not work with her because she can’t meet you for coffee to plan a project! Even if you are just working by yourself, it makes successful blogging far more manageable and less daunting, which is a huge key to sustaining a blog long term.

ProjectPlace offers a free 14 day trial to get you started, and I’m sure you will be hooked as quick as I was! Sign up at ProjectPlace.com!

I received access to ProjectPlace in exchange for testing and my unbiased review and I was compensated for my time and effort, however, my experience with the product and the opinions expressed in this review are 100% mine.

Your New Beauty Blog: A Review of Halden Zimmermann’s Guide to High Impact Blogs

March 31, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Style Chicks will be 10 years old next year. 10 YEARS! Back then it wasn’t even called a blog – if you wanted to make sure someone knew what you were talking about, you had to call it by the proper name – weblog.

Since 10 years of beauty blogging is a decent chunk of time, new and aspiring bloggers will frequently reach out to us for advice. So we have decided to start a new feature on Style Chicks with tips and tricks to help get new bloggers going.

Our first bit of advice is to read some books, not just blogs (yeah, odd advice, I know.) There are some excellent books out there that take you from the absolute first steps of blogging. It isn’t a step to skimp on – if you don’t get the beginning steps right, you will either end up having to retool things later or, or worse yet, you will fizzle out and abandon your blog.

In the spirit of doing things right the first time, I have been procrastinating on starting this feature until I received an audio copy of Halden Zimmermann’s Guide to High Impact Blogs. This book covers the practical basics of starting a blog, and also covers the steps required to keep your blog going long term. Whether you want to monetize your blog or just want to speak to the world, this book is an excellent starting point.

The main message of the book is that a blog is a business. This rung very true for me. You might be balking at that as a concept – “it’s just a blog!” you might say. But consider this: there are businesses that never plan on making a dime, but provide a service. But the planning and implementation are largely the same as companies that have no motive other than profit. So even if you are just starting a blog as a hobby, you still need to run it as a business. This isn’t to scare you off. This is so your blog a) remains sustainable for as long as you choose to keep on blogging, b) can make you money if you choose to monetize it, and c) remains fun. Dealing with hassles that come with bad planning is a quick way for your blog to become a burden rather than an exciting outlet.

Once you have decided to start a blog, the next point I’m going to bring out from Zimmermann’s book might seem counterintuitive. Offer to guest blog (for free) on blogs you like. A lot of bloggers will take you up on it. I will probably take you up on it. What does it do for you? It establishes you as an expert in the field, and it provides a link to your new blog from an established blog with people who are already interested in what your blog talks about. It also offers a tacit endorsement from the other bloggers that you are an expert. This is definitely what a new blogger wants.

A point I particularly liked in the book is to consider if your content is “evergreen” before you publish it. Last week I was going through my first few years of posts. Some posts look distinctly out of place on Style Chicks today. They probably looked out of place then. I hadn’t considered my long-term goals for the blog; I just wanted to produce good content. This isn’t to say that your goals can’t change over time. I have taken Style Chicks in many different directions over time, but every business needs to shape-shift every once in awhile. In the constantly evolving world of the Internet, changing directions or refining goals is a fact of life.

As someone who has been blogging for a long time, this book rang true on so many levels and added clarity to decisions I made over time – good and bad decisions. So if you want to avoid the bad decisions from the start and intentionally make the good decisions, I highly recommend Guide to High Impact Blogs. I made so many notes and bookmarks myself – it really is an excellent guide. I have a whole list of points like these that I could keep talking about, but the book does a much better job of explaining it than I am!

Find Guide to High Impact Blogging at http://haldenzimmermann.net/.