The fabulous Angela taking portraits.

This past weekend I attended the blog workshop Blogshop

[Read more about it here if you are as yet unfamiliar.]

Two days. Two teachers. Too much coffee.

Already I can say with confidence that BlogShop was one of the best investments I have ever made, both personally & professionally.

If you have been considering attending a Blogshop class, but are still stuck with your mouse hovering over “Add to Cart”, let me say that I highly recommend snagging a seat in the class nearest to you (if they aren’t already planning on it, you can beg kindly request that they add your city to the tour). It’s beautifully done, the teachers are amazing women, you’ll learn and you’ll laugh;

I promise you won’t regret it.

Major takeaways for me:

1. Connecting with so many talented ladies in my area:

Not only did I have the surreal feeling of meeting in-person the ladies behind one of the first blogs I fell in love with, I was introduced to the amazing pool of local creative talent as well: Nikki of Ampersat llc, the ladies of Primp boutique, Miss Molly Rose, and Miss Kendra, to name a few. When you aspire to bring your style, creativity, or professional polish up a notch, having others in your boat (especially ones that are on pace or further along than you are) is invaluable.

Shout out to the creative ladies of the flyover states:
{Midwest REPRESENT}.

2. Droolworthy studio space:

Orbit Studio B – So beautiful.

3. Layout, Templates, Re-touching, and learning tasty shortcuts (+ *finally* becoming comfortable with my Wacom tablet):

Sometimes it’s those little details. I was not new to Photoshop when I signed up for Blogshop, I just felt that I needed more than a manual to get it. I had previously taken a University course on Computer Art Applications, roughly a third of which was Photoshop, building off what I had gleaned years ago from a jr high independent computer sciences elective. Sure, I could retouch photos, but not quickly or efficiently. And you know every time I opened the program it was like starting over completely – no presets, no templates, no organization. Honestly, many if not all of these shortcuts were probably written in one of my course textbooks, or at least scribbled in the margins of the Photoshop unit lecture notes. Yet my relationship with Photoshop was haphazard at best. You may think that you could learn most of these things on your own, and you probably could. But you won’t.

4. One word: GIFS. Check it:

Basically, I didn’t blog or use Photoshop efficiently until Blogshop. Context made it stick. Real-world examples and understanding by doing, by following along, by being spoken to just as an individual, not as a subordinate. Bri and Angela both were articulate, genuine, fun. They each brought a unique perspective to the table: different work experiences, different flavors of creativity, and vastly different levels of seriousness regarding Instagram photos.

Blogshop inspired me to take my blogging seriously, to be consistent, to actually write an editorial calendar. It made me realize that it is actually possible to get my blog to look the way I want it to. I felt my creative energy swell such that I am now fit to burst with new ideas for DIYs and moodboards, this time with the tools to move forward and do it just the way I envisioned it in my head.

So, what did I get out of it? The two days flew by. The teachers are gone. The coffee has since left my system.
What remains is this: I am so glad I went.

{And for the record, us Minnesotans (esp. with our sprinkling of Canadians) will always be too polite to ask for pizza, so thanks for feeding it to us anyway.}