Relaunching My Blog for National Craft Month

Since March is National Craft Month, I thought it would be a good time to redesign and relaunch this blog. Unfortunately, I let it become overshadowed by work on my Nudged to Write blog last fall, then came the holidays, then I got busy with some writing/judging deadlines. Don't ask me what happened to February. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Actually, I don't mean to say I was totally inactive. In fact, I've got a raft of new items to list in my Etsy shop, NudgeryFaire, over the next few weeks. In the meantime, I'm aspiring to be a better craft/needlework blogger with more frequent posts.

Have you ever heard of National Craft Month? The Craft & Hobby Association (CHA) blog gives a brief history. CHA created National Craft Month in 1994 to "help people learn about and re-discover the joy of crafting and all its many benefits." CHA also owns and operates CraftPlace, a site filled with resources, projects, and information. Their "Craft Happenings" page includes a calendar of events celebrating National Craft Month by various publishers and product companies. The round-up of craft blogs is so interesting I plan to examine select blogs in future posts throughout March (and probably beyond).

If you love crafts and needlework, this is your month to celebrate, try something new, and let the world know how creative you are.

A note on the new design: Besides tweaking some colors and typefaces, my biggest design change is creating new right and left borders for the blog. Like these? I cropped this photo of a doily I sold in January on Etsy:

I then used a distortion feature in my photo software to transform the cropped center of the doily into this:

Next, I loaded the photo into my blog template and chose the "tile" option. I love the colors and the intricate pattern this creates. I crocheted the original doily from two different balls of Coats & Clark variegated cotton thread, plus terra cotta-colored accents from some leftover hand-dyed cotton thread.