Online tools for bloggers & business owner

I've been blogging since a while now, and also am running a small business at the same time, but only recently I've found a great routine to plan, schedule, write, work, publish and create, all of this while also staying organized. Most of it is thanks to some great (and mostly free) online tools, websites and apps that help me schedule, promote and plan ahead, while also staying updated with my website's analytics. Here I've written down a little list of favourite tools that are especially awesome for bloggers and small business owners!

Stay tuned until the end for a free printable weekly planner!

Buffer - As much as I like to publish authentic content on social media too, sometimes scheduled tweets are the only way to go for me. I usually only schedule tweets to promote my blog posts, usually 4/5 times spread during the day. You'll be able to pre-schedule standard hours for your tweets, so it's great to look at when your followers are more active on Twitter and strategically plan ahead when to make your tweets go live.

Sunrise Calendar - I usually plan my blog posts a month or so ahead, so it's great to have a nice calendar app where to plan ahead when those posts are going live on my blog. Sunrise Calendar has a lovely interface, and it allows me to use different colours for different typologies of posts (like food, beauty, style, etc.) to be able to never publish the same type of posts two days in a row.

LikeBtn - See that little hearts/likes counter in the footer of my posts?! I know there're a tun of plugins to install it for free on Wordpress, but it's not that easy to find an aesthetically pleasing button that works fine on Blogger too, but LikeBtn is doing the trick for me. It's not always free, but is very inexpensive and a great way to see what your readers actually like.

MailChimp - I'm new to newsletters, but I'm really into building a mailing list to stay connected with people that is really interested in my blog content and business and MailChimp is super easy to use (even without following a guide) and it's great because there're plugins for Wordpress and Squarespace, and easy form codes to implement anywhere in your template.

Coffitivity - This is so great! If you're one that likes to work in coffee shops but can't really be in one everyday, Coffitivity recreates the sounds of a café to make you feel like you're there whereas you're actually in your boring office. It's a boost for inspiration, plus you can pick the sound you most like!

Mapbox - Great for lifestyle and travel bloggers, Mapbox allows you to create maps of your favourite cities to place a mark where your favourite shops, bakeries, restaurants, ect. are located to suggest them to your followers. It's a lovely idea to add to a page of your lifestyle/travel blog, as you can also add links to your own content in the description of the place to reindex your readers to your reviews or photos.

Twitter Cards - Did you know you can create cards on Twitter to make it super easy for your followers to visit your website or subscribe to your newsletter without even leaving Twitter? You can create lead, website, images or app cards for free, but to me these are extremely lovely for promoting and incrementing my mailing list!

Pinterest for Business - If you're using Pinterest already, you'll know its a great one for inspiration. If you're looking into inspire your following, it must be the place where to promote your products or content. Sign up to Pinterest for Business to see the stats of your Pinterest account and see which pins are more popular and even how people pin from your website. Take a look at this amazing guide if you're new to promoting your blog/small business on Pinterest.

Google Analytics - You'll know Google Analytics better than me, but if you've not yet signed up, you really need to take the step. The tricky part is setting it up, but once done, you'll see all the stats of your blog in one place, even the demographic of your readers, which is not only interesting to know, but also important to understand what kind of people is interested in your blog/small business.

Rich Pins - These add extra informations right under your pins, and make it super easy for your followers to see what your recipes, places, products pins are about!

What about your favourite online tools for creatives? Do you already use all of these? x

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Let's catch up!

With this blog of mine and my little design business coming to one year of existence in less than a month, I'm so enthusiastic about how things turned out for both of them. I've been extremely busy designing blogs, headers, creating illustrations and coding templates this past months that either I can't remember when I started nor I can see an end to it, and it's just amazing if you ask me! An year ago I had this few ideas in mind that I wouldn't have ever thought they would have become what they are right now! But working from home everyday can be overwhelming sometimes, especially if you forget when the working day starts and ends and that your lunch should be in the kitchen and not at your workspace.

Blessing yoga for its existence! Even if I only take an hour for myself, it totally makes the difference! I'm so into this challenge - I'm at day 25 - almost over! - but if when I started I thought I would have been tired of it by this time, I'm actually so enjoying it right now that I already worry about what I'll do when it's over! I guess I'll re-start it or practice what I've learned so far... And to treat myself for all the hard work, I might or might not have bought some yoga gear that was on my wishlist for a very long time!

Since I have your attention, I wanted to ask you a little favor! You know how I love to cook and bake and share my recipes, and how hard I try to make them be as healthy as I can and yet delicious and nice looking in my posts, so I'd be extremely grateful if you could nominate Miel Café at the Saveur Blog Awards 2015! They reward blogs that talk about food in all its forms and nominations close tomorrow! It'll totally make my day if you have two spare seconds to nominate my blog!

What are you up to lately? Let's chat in the comment box! x

DIY Cappuccino Stencils!

Latte art has always been fascinating to me, but don't ask me when I started actually trying to achieve it. It's really not meant to be - everything I needed started falling apart, beginning with the milk-frother and then the whole coffee machine. Nice! Not to mention I really should invest in more adequate utensils to get some tangible results... but I'm not really sure I'll actually be up to it!

It was only when I stumbled across this beautiful movie that I had the idea of using cappuccino stencils to facilitate the whole thing. I had a browse online and realised I didn't want to pay that much for something I would actually do myself almost costless, and also, I really loved the idea to come up with different designs, figures and texts and reflect my mood in my morning coffee. So I designed and created my first stencils and since then I made others and others (and if you have had a look at my Instagram profile, you'd had realised how excited about the whole thing I am!) and sharpened my technique until now I'm able to share how to make DIY cappuccino stencils from scratch with you!

You'll need:
Printable cappuccino stencils templates (download them here)
Clear stencil sheet
Pencil
Cutting mat
Small and big scissors
Precise cutter
Clear tape

Method:
1 :: First off, print the stencils on A4 paper. Use the top of a mug to draw the shape of your stencil and make sure it would be the exact size of your mugs. Create the stencil handle using a small round object, then cut the stencil using your scissors.

2 :: Trace the design onto the stencil sheet using a pencil and making sure it's in the middle, then cut the stencil with a precise cutter and small scissors onto a cutting mat.

3 :: Use the tape to fix any mistakes!

4 :: Wash your stencils before using them, then make your cappuccino, place the DIY stencil on top of the mug and sift the cocoa over it! Use the handle to easily remove the stencil and enjoy your beautiful coffee!

On a milk-frothing note, I'm not one to give tips as I do things that are not exactly professional (no, I don't always pour too much milk and no froth at all and then end up trying to reduce the amount of milk in my mug in the most embarrassing ways, which I won't tell here to avoid to embarass me even more) but I'd say as much as something like the IKEA Milk-Frother is so easy and quick to use, you won't go any far by using it before creating a cocoa design on top of your latte: it creates too many bubbles and once the cocoa powder hits them, they will pop and ruin the design! Steam is the way to go, and trying and avoiding bubbles as much as you can. Try swirling the pot or tapping it onto a surface before pouring the milk in your mug to eliminate the air. The trick is to not overdo with the cocoa powder, the less the better!

I love the idea of creating DIY stencils for my food so much that I might start designing something for my cakes too! It's so fun to create a different creative cappuccino every morning, it totally brightens up my day!

Let me know if you try this project and tweet me a picture of your cappuccino if you do!

Blog rebranding

You may have noticed from my tweets or just visiting my blog the last few days, that Miel Cafè had a complete makeover and it's now all changed and prettier. I was planning to redesign my blog completely for a few months now, but I had no clue what to change for a while since I actually decided to sit down and concretely do something.

This wasn't my original project by any means, I actually didn't have a real original project if not some ideas and HTML codes and JavaScripts I wanted to use. Thanks to my boyfriend which had the major idea for this beautiful blog design, I was actually able to put together the blog design I'm most proud of and, yes, I'm super proud of myself for being able to do such things without any external help if not my boyfriend always suggesting lovely ideas to make it better. I can actually say this is the result of everything I learned during these past few months of designing other bloggers blogs, and it's so nice to see I could put every beautiful thing I learned into one blog design. I know, it feels like I'm talking of my wedding dress, but if you can get the most beautiful design you can put together it must be special and need to be the one. I don't think I would ever had asked something more or different to a more professional web designer than myself, so I'm super happy about it!

Up to the actually blog design, it was definitely inspired by the idea behind my blog of being a safe and comfy place that reflects my personality and the contents I like to produce. It wants to recreate a comfy Café's atmosphere and it's really personal being that every illustration and picture you can see in the design were photos taken by me of things I own and live with everyday. My primary requirement was to achieve an easier and nicer navigation experience, and I think the sticky navigation bar as well as the new pages appearance and the neat disposition of every gadget really make it so simple to find anything a reader might need.

I wanted my blog to have a face you can remember and enjoy, something that made it really special and different from any other, and the only solution I find was to actually inspire the design to myself as an individual different to any other one, with things I like and colors I love. Hopefully this will give its very own vibe to Miel Cafè, which is what I always look for.

You might want to take a look to my new Archive, the redesigned About Me & Miel Cafè page, the quicker Contact Form to ask me any questions you may have, as well as the new responsive and mobile friendly appearance of my blog (check it out here!).

Hope you enjoy the new Miel Café's interface!

July Wallpaper | A Freebie

So today is the first of July and this means it's time to change your wallpaper! This month's freebie features some summer-y objects like some watermelon, seashell, espadrillas (which was super inspired by one of most recent purchases which you can see on here or here) and iced coffee which is my new favourite breakfast! Hope you enjoy this month's calendar wallpaper!

What Is My Screen Resolution

1280x800 | 1440x900 | 1366x768

iPhone | iPad

Why I love blog design

✂ being that I work with colors, illustrations, codes, fonts every day every hour, it really keeps my creativity alive as I always push myself to find new ways to express what I have to say in that particular moment of my life, or what others try to say through their blogs
✂ I love getting to know new people and their blogs, there are so many different kinds of blog and little business out there that I wish every of them could stand out and become bigger one day in their own ways
✂ it makes me see how different people's tastes can be and how anyone has a different perspective of what it's beautiful
✂ I love seeing how people treat and love their blogs - and how happy they are right after seeing their new interface
✂ I love seeing how important a blog can be, sometimes it's truely a little extension of ourselves
✂ it makes me experiment and learn new things everyday
✂ it pushes me to do something I may would have never done by my own
✂ it allows me to talk to a lot of different people from all over the world with so different blogs or little business but all having big dreams to share
✂ I love creating and seeing something coming out from nothing to something beautiful
✂ I love sharing and helping other bloggers to have a beautiful space online that can express their personality and tastes

You know, coding all day can be a bit stressful sometimes but I still do love what I do and even though it sometimes just feels so overwhelming it still makes me so happy and satisfied once it's finished. Also my little design shop has had a make over recently and I also started selling two one of a kind design, Flora and Olive, so if you'd like to check out some of my new works and are maybe interested in buying something, I have a little weekend discount code for a 10% off everything until next Monday using the code ILOVEBLOGDESIGN10 at checkout!

Check out my design shop here!

June Wallpaper | A Freebie

June is here so it's time to reniew that desktop of yours for the new month. Here is a little freebie from me made out from my last watercolour session last month. Don't know if it's only the Chanel June Nail Polish's fault but when I think of June in a colour that pretty coraly peachy shade always came up in my mind, so I thought this illustration was very appropriate. Enjoy!

What Is My Screen Resolution

1280x800 | 1440x900 | 1366x768

iPhone | iPad