A Brand New Look for Paper & Stitch

Surprise! The newly redesigned site is up today! And I’m so excited to share it. SO many updates and features to explain, but first…

It may seem like this came out of left field, even though I’m about 85% sure I mentioned it casually at some point. But the reason why I didn’t say much prior to now is because I wasn’t 100% sure when exactly we’d be able to launch. Jeff and I have been quietly working behind the scenes off and on for quite a few months. And honestly, I’m almost as surprised as you may (or may not) be that it’s finally done.

So what’s new?! Visually, the site has a fresh new look. We wanted something that would propel the site forward aesthetically, while also keeping in mind what we’ve done in the past.

Keeping the focus on an easy to navigate layout that will help you discover new content quickly and find older content easily as well was SUPER important to me. So, aside from a facelift, there some brand new features that make the 4,000 + pages of content WAY easier to browse AND find exactly what you’re look for, which I’m pretty pumped about. So let’s start there…

#1 You can now find DIY projects super easily!

One of the things that I REALLY struggled with staying on top of with the old site was cataloging all of the DIY posts in an up-to-date way. The old site required me to do that manually, which is why it (unfortunately) was not updated very often. BUT now, everything gets updated automatically AND there are additional DIY dropdown categories, so you can narrow your search even further. Visit the new DIY section to give it a test spin.

#2 Same goes for other top categories too!

And since there is far more to Paper & Stitch than just DIY projects, we decided to make that functionality possible for all of the main categories as well…which, in addition to DIY, now includes: Food, Interiors, Fashion, and Travel.

So, now, if you want to find a holiday recipe, for example, you can do that by selecting the Food category  up top in the navigation, selecting holiday in the category dropdown, and then select the particular holiday foods you’re searching for from a sub category dropdown. Viola!

OR let’s say you want to search for a particular color in the Interiors section, you can do that too! Along with searching by style, interest, room, and more. Take a look! It’s fun to play around with. Here’s what the travel section looks like…

#3 Mobile friendly! That was something that was SUPER important to me as part of the redesign because (shockingly) at least 50% of you very awesome readers are viewing the site on mobile. So, it should probably be easy to navigate and look good for ya, right? I’m kind of embarrassed that it took us this long to tackle that particular part of the site. But hey, better late than never right?

Now, things should be easy to find, easy to read, and easy to Pin. Insert thumbs up emoji here. Haha.

#4 Featured section! Continuing on with the theme of being able to find the best content quickly and easily, we added a featured posts slideshow toward the top of the homepage, that you can navigate through using the arrows to find additional posts that you might like.

I suspect this area will be especially helpful when holidays pop up, so top content from year’s passed can be found easily, for example, and will also keep things in line with the editorial calendar we’re planning from month to month.

#5 Sidebar features! Along those same lines, there is a most popular posts section on the sidebar, so you can see what readers are loving most at a glance. And a seasonally changing sidebar slideshow (say that 3 times fast) that features timely content. For example, the sidebar slideshow currently shows organizational DIY ideas to inspire you at the start of 2016, and next month it will be Valentine’s Day DIY ideas, etc.

#6 Shop! After closing the exhibition site two years ago, almost to the day, I have to admit, I’ve been missing putting together curated, shop-able lists. And while I do still do that with gift guides and fashion roundups, I wanted something with more of a gallery feel from the old P&S days that is always easy to find.

So, I’ve put together a shop-able list of my picks from around the web on the shop page (which you can find in the top homepage navigation – far right). I’ll be adding new items here all the time, so be sure to check back on that page often for new products.

More! There are some other little nuggets too, like bigger blog post images. Went from 550 pixels wide to 600.

And Instagram at a glance, which can be found at the bottom of the home page. You can click any of those photos to be taken to my IG to see more. We’ll be doing some fun Instagram related things in the future that aren’t quite ready yet, so stay tuned.

And that’s about it for now…I’ll stop my rambling.

And, of course…there will be more updates as we go, since we couldn’t fit everything into this release. So, if you’re have any feedback, suggestions, or comments feel free to leave me a note in the comments. I would love to hear your thoughts on the redesign as well as any suggestions for what you’d love to see in the future.