With the steady demise of shelter magazines ~ House & Garden, House Beautiful, Southern Accents, In Style Home, Blueprint, Home, Cottage Living, O at Home, Country Home & Domino have all have been shuttered ~ art & design blogs are brilliantly filling the void. When one starts a blog & embarks its learning curve & daily time commitment, the beginning months are all about creating quality ~ hopefully ~ content that will attract a loyal & growing readership. And, if we are perfectly honest, we are constantly benchmarking our efforts against the blog leaders in our niche. I have my daily reads ~ decor8, design*sponge, apartment therapy to name just a few, who are all widely considered to be best in class. I would be lying if I said to join them was not my dream.

The best way to find new blogs is to click on a respected blog’s blogroll ~ you can see my own growing blogroll by clicking on the friends button on the left. I recently found velvet & linen, the blog of LA designer, Brooke Giannetti. Brooke & her architect husband, Steve, own Giannetti Home & regularly collaborate on design projects together.

Brooke recently celebrated her blog’s 1 year “bloggy-versary”. With Brooke’s blog, I did something I have never done before which was go back to her first post & scan/read everything sequentially as it was written. Usually with a blog, you read the current stuff, possibly surf around in it a little & then decide if it is something that is valuable enough to you to to take the time to revisit either daily or from time-to-time. Since I have only been blogging for 4 months & have been focusing more on content than promotion, I was curious about several things ~ how a blog author takes their vision & develops their blogging voice, how their focus may change over time as their experience grows or their passions or taste evolves & how they create their community.

Brooke’s blog is absolutely beautiful & she has amazing taste. I like the personal glimpses she gives her readers of her family life & awesome marriage & partnership with Steve.

I totally flipped over this house Steve designed & Brooke blogged about last November ~

His & hers master baths & closets! TDF!!!

Find the link to the original post here.

So, what did I learn after really delving into Brooke’s blog the way I did. That she is really talented ~ ditto for Steve. That not only does your blogging voice grow stronger over time, but your point of view gets more focused. That I need to get over my blog need to be perfect before starting to reach out to my fellow bloggers ~ blogs are forever being tweaked, improved & even redesigned. That to develop a community, I need to do much more than just read & write. Oh, the last thing i learned is that referencing my life & personal design choices more will bring a new dimension to my work on style is in the details.

Thanks, Brooke!

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