A short one this week. I just wanted to share a trick or a “hack” (ugh) that I use on photos to make them look sophisticated and on-trend.

It seems like every trendy Instagram photographer loves to take pictures of their breakfast, or their day planners on top of their nice marble countertops. But what if you don’t have nice marble countertops?

Well, those Instagrammers might not have them either, because there’s a whole industry of realistic looking photo backdrops. Sleek marble, rustic wood - you can create almost any atmosphere you want.

Just a quick search on Etsy brings up tons of results for backdrops of all sizes and patterns, like these.

I haven’t tried any of these backdrops, but I use something even cheaper: a marble patterned white board from Target. It has the right shiny finish and I love the way my minimal flatlay photos look on top of it. It was less than $10!

So there you go. Anyone can achieve this sophisticated look, in product photos or just for fun.

Stay tuned for another entry about flatlay photos.

❤ Bayley​​

I’ve been using my mood board app a lot lately to keep track of interior design ideas. But my other favorite use of mood boards is nailing down the aesthetic of a brand.

There are no rules with mood boards! I use an app and save images from the web, but you can be an overachiever and cut out real pictures from magazines or things you’ve printed.

​First, think about some broad ideas. How do you want your brand to look? What do you want to communicate? You can start from a color, a picture, a font, whatever piece of inspiration you have.

If you don’t know where to start, I suggest browsing Instagram for cool photos and people/brands with clear styles. Look at fonts online and even peruse color palettes from interior design websites. Anything can be inspiration!

Add things and take them off until you’re happy with the style you’ve achieved. Edit to remove things that look out of place, and eventually narrow down your look to a clearly communicated brand aesthetic.

After you’ve made your board to establish a style (or maybe you already have a style) a mood board can continue to be useful as a convenient quick reference when making new graphics, selecting stock photos, and editing existing photos. Add things to compare and see if they fit within your established design scheme.

If you’re like me, you’ll find these extremely fun and satisfying to make.

​Good luck!

​❤ Bayley​

I have been hearing about “the Pomodoro method” for quite some time now and finally decided to try it for myself.

For the uninitiated, Pomodoro is a supposed productivity hack, consisting of 4 25-minute periods of work with 5 minute breaks in between. After 4 25-minute work periods, you then get a long break of 25 minutes. At least, this is the default. You can change the numbers around however you want.

All the apps do is time the intervals for you and sound alarms when time is up. I downloaded the first app that showed up when I searched “Pomodoro” in the App Store and immediately tried it out on the default settings.

This is what I learned:

• 25 minutes is so fast. 25 minutes seems like a perfect, undaunting amount of time. I was always surprised when time was up.
• Breaks aren’t rewarding unless you give yourself something nice to do. Mostly, I just wanted to continue working during breaks. But I started coloring and doing other fun stuff on breaks that made me like them more.
• You realize how often you just want to check your phone. I reached for my phone so many times, only to pull my hand away when I saw the timer ticking down. And 25 minutes is not a long time to respond to a text! They can wait.
• A good way to work on multiple tasks at once? This might go against the whole spirit of the technique, but I started using my breaks to work on other projects. I have a billion things to do! I kind of liked working on the immediate tasks while still making progress on longer term projects.
• Pomodoro means “tomato” in Italian and the original inventor still holds the copyright. The app I downloaded doesn’t mention the word “Pomodoro” anywhere, but it has the tell-tale tomato in its logo! This prompted me to look it up (on a break of course).

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I’m not sure if I will stick to the Pomodoro Technique. I think it would be useful for people who find themselves distracted a lot, but I resist anything that adds any structure to my day.

I might give it a go for another few days, but it definitely didn’t change my life.

​❤ Bayley​