If my life was a movie, it would be called Serendipity. All my life I have had some pretty spectacular chance events and meetings but this year takes the prize in terms of my creative journey. I have come across so many amazing creatives this year who have knowingly or unknowingly helped me immensely, not only in a practical-how-to-do-this way but also an emotional-I-can-do-this way. I hope I am making some sense. :p

Well the point being thank you, Mimi. You came at the right time and this class was just the push I needed. :)

So after a long week of planning, gulping down God knows how many cups of tea, executing, and planning some more, I am so happy to share my very own website! Aaaaaaaaaaaaa! *cannot keep calm*

Here we go! Presenting…..

www.confessionsonmychalkboard.com

Password: Anuradha

What is Confessions on my Chalkboard?

As an artist and maybe even more so as a self-taught one, we all go through phases of uncertainty, blocks and worst of all self-doubt. And I want to fix that, for myself and for everyone else going through the same. So I decided I want to make “Confessions on my Chalkboard” into the happiest, most inspiring space that I can for creators across the globe. I hope to fill it with happy doodles and prints and share my learning with other creators.

Website Preview

One Step at a Time - image 1 - student project

One Step at a Time - image 2 - student project

One Step at a Time - image 3 - student project

Here’s how I went about building the website.

Process

Goals and audience: This is the first thing in Mimi’s template and rightly so. In my case I want the website to be a place where I can provide art beginners “a place to begin” literally! From sharing what I know in the form of classes, workshops and blog posts, I hope to make things simpler and less overwhelming for them (I have some fun group doodling projects in mind as well :D). This would be the primary goal and target group for my website. Secondly, I also want to use this platform to share all the happy prints that I design and link it to my Society 6 shop. The third goal is a long term one but something I want to get to this year. It’s building a professional portfolio and getting licensing projects through it. Although Adobe Portfolio also seems to be a great option and I might use that and have its link up on the website.
Site content: Before selecting the template, I made a quick list of things I need to show on the website. This helped me identify the most important sections and see which theme can present them in the best way.
Template selection: I quite liked the Narrative theme for it seems to have a nice flow in terms of story-telling. Also loved the end-to-end images. I did like the header & footer better in some other themes but Narrative has better capabilities in terms of sections so I went with that. The other theme I loved was Brooklyn in case anyone reading wants to check out other options.
Site Navigation & Home Page Wire frame: So for these two steps I spent quite some time scribbling and sketching on paper to brainstorm ideas and ways I could go about it. At this point, I also referred to websites of other people who I admire or are doing something similar. And also kept the theme open in front of me so I would know what all can I do with the individual sections. For the navigation I kept it simple and created 2 levels only as Mimi had advised.
Website Building: And finally I started building the site and played some more with the flow. I did run into a few issues like there’s a lot of default space between each section and the font options were limited. But it was really fun to tweak sections to fit my vision and overall I think this theme worked quite well. I will be working on setting up the other pages and linking everything next.

Here’s my complete site plan for reference.

One Step at a Time - image 6 - student project

And that brings us to the finish line. Sorry about the long piece. I am a fan of big lists and detailed documentations! :p

Until next time,

Anuradha

Anuradha Rautela

Surface Pattern Designer

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