A (Sort of) Milestone

You can see these lilacs here
on my Flowers board

As many of you who follow this blog regularly probably already know, I'm not much into numbers ... as in numbers of social media followers. I am far more interested in those who have been with me (and will continue to be with me) for the long haul.

So it is with a major amount of surprise that I realized this morning that I have 800 followers on Pinterest. While I know that may be a small potatoes number to many of you, for me it's huge! My Pinterest board activity far outpaces any of my other social media outlet activity, so I thought it might be fun to get a little background on all those Voie de Vie followers:

This awesome riot of color
can be viewed here

Top five pinner metro locations (highest to lowest):

       New York
   Washington, D.C.
      Los Angeles

These pretty in pink peonies can be
seen on my Flowers board here

        Atlanta
    Philadelphia


While my audience is far and away from the United States, the next four countries who pin from my boards:

        
        Canada
    United Kingdom
     Netherlands
       Germany

The five boards with the most amount of followers (highest to lowest):

             Flowers
             Interiors

I love the color play in this
arrangement, which you can see here

         Stylemakers
Fashion Weeks/Events Around the World
    I Tought I Saw A Puddy Kat

And, along the sides, you'll see the five all-time most pinned images from my boards. It's no coincidence that four of them are flowers! Although, I must say that in the last thirty days my Fiber Fanatic board has been getting a fair amount of repins.

I had no idea when I created a flowers board that it would become my most popular board - I only knew I love flowers and wanted to share their inspiration with others. Go figure.

Of course, the board I want everyone to follow - my original designs board, is still in its quest to gain further traction. That's alright, I am patient. 

And last, but certainly not least, this
lovely living space can be seen here
on my Interiors board. In the past
I've blogged about its popularity.

And while I thought my Interiors board would be the runaway hit (but was eclipsed rather quickly by those darned awesome flowers), the big surprise has been my Stylemakers board, which came out of ... like ... nowhere, to jump into the third most-followed board.

Pinterest has been a very good thing for me - not only in terms of sharing my inspirations and a way to visually show a good portion of my making, but it has also contributed to design sales (although I am less interested in this direct connection). It's nice that Ravely now tracks sales referrals for shopkeepers. 

I thank everyone who follows my boards, and I hope I continue to be a visual inspiration to each of you.

An Overview This Fee-Fi(ber)-F.O. Friday

Happy Friday, everyone. Another week is ready for the history books. 

At the beginning of the year I said I'd do a 2014 recap, and then completing Leather, Lace, Grit & Grace pretty much took over all my spare moments. Now that it's done, I can do a little reflecting.

The first thing I did was go through all of my blog posts from last year and collected the lion's share of images into this collage to the left. Boy it was another busy designing and painting and book reviewing and just generally creating year. The photos were a great prompt to remind me of all the creativity in my world. I am one truly lucky person. I also work hard to earn that luck!

One thing I noticed was the drop in blog posts from my 2012 high of 108 entries down to 66. That's not necessarily a bad thing (since I've consistently increased my design output), but it is a shift. I've also been writing for publication slightly more, which I really enjoy. I do hope I can continue that trend this year.

I also spent a lot of time and energy last year expanding my social footprint - I now have Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest accounts. I also started separate Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as a blog for the book. Between the blog and all of those other accounts, I felt was drowning in social media at the end of the year. Way.Too.Much. I shall be consolidating a few of these accounts (and in fact, I've already started with the blog). While I continue to have ambivalent feelings about Facebook (nothing against all the Facebook "people" out there, just a personal preference), I do enjoy my Twitter and Pinterest accounts, and my Pinterest boards are, along with my blog, far and away my most popular social media sites. For my interests and how I best like to represent those interests, that makes sense to me. I'm going to keep concentrating on what I like and works best and focus the extra energy I've been squandering on social media boondoggles into those creative areas that bring me so much joy - designing, painting, writing and cooking.

Lovely green yarn for an
upcoming design I've been
working on. Isn't it just spring
and summer in a photo?

Last year will also forever be marked by the process of publishing my first book. Someone once wrote that publishing a book is a transformative thing. I will absolutely agree with that! I am still too close to it all to accurately assess the transformation but, at minimum, I now know I can actually do it. Leather, Lace, Grit & Grace is 202 pages of pure awesomeness, and every little bit of it is all my creation. I still can't quite believe it, despite the evidence. I expect that my previous collections were leading me to this, although that's never been my intent with them. I'm usually fairly focused on each collection as I'm working on it. Nevertheless designing, writing, and doing artwork and photography for a book of this size on my own seemed a herculean task before I actually accomplished it. 

I will be announcing a new social media campaign next week, and so with spring and new beginnings came the perfect opportunity for me to look back. Last year was, overall, incredibly expansive and rewarding. It was also the best year for my design business - in all aspects. I now have a clearer picture of what I want to do this year. I hope you'll stick around for the ride.

I'm Pinning ... I Think

Voie de Vie now has an official Pinterest presence! See the button just to the right?

I've set up a few boards, all pinned with my photos. I'm still a little leery about pinning lots of images that I didn't create. It's one thing for me to put my photos out there and have them repinned, but quite another to pin someone else's images. There are some exceptions to this - retail sites mostly; definitely museum sites as well, and I'm certain I can think of more.

I'd love to hear how everyone uses their Pinterest boards (and, of course, whether or not you actually use Pinterest). What might you find interesting to see on a designer's board?