Luloveshandmade

A Hamburg Trip with Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream

February 9, 2015

Oh wow, this past weekend was super great! You know why? It included ice cream and a short trip to wonderful Hamburg! :)

But let’s start here: last summer, I took part in Ben & Jerry’s Taste & Tunes Tour, spent the afternoon at their event in Berlin, took photos, handed out the most delicious Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and enjoyed live music under the hot summer sun (wow, writing this makes me really realy look forward to next summer! ;))

This time, Ben & Jerry’s invited me again and this time it was about trying their new ice cream flavors at a lovely blogger event in Hamburg. So this past Friday, I packed my bag and drove to wonderful Hamburg which was awaiting me with the most beautiful winter weather.

On the train, some handlettering and drawing got me into the perfect mood for eating ice cream all evening and this awesome sunshine weather and the palm trees at Park Fiction even intensified this. :)

Ben & Jerry’s had invited some other lovely bloggers and me to join them for an evening at an old piano factory where they had prettily decorated everything for us and prepared delicious catering.
We got to know a lot about Ben & Jerry’s ice cream mission, about how their brand had developed, about enrivonmental issues, sustainability and fair trade. If you are curious, you can read more about B & J on their website.

Apart from liking their mission, I also love Ben & Jerry’s corporate design, everything is so bright and colorful.
The tables were decorated with flowers and we all got a pretty notebook and pen and a book with the history of this brand.

The food was delicous and each of us had a cookie with ones name at her place. ;)

After having some snacks and getting to know more about B & J, the most important and most anticipated part of the evening began – we got to try out the new ice cream flavors!! So exciting!! :)
One flavor is called ‘What-a-lotta Chocolate Cookie Core’ and the other one – my new favorite – is called ‘Speculoos? Specu-Love. Cookie Core’. So both of them have a soft cookie core and also cookie pieces inside of the ice cream. Divine!

This flavor is just awesome, I could eat it all year, not just for Christmas! Hmmm! Both flavors are coming to stores this week, yayy!

It’s a wonder I haven’t gotten sick from eating that much delicious ice cream! :)

We also took some photos and drew on bubbles and made magnets with out photos. Sweeet! :) And I got to spend some time with lovely blogger pals, two of them were Nadine and Vivi, as seen here on the photo. :)

In the morning after having woken up from ice cream coma, I had a look into Ben & Jerry’s lovingly designed press book and dived into more details about their philosophy.

To get rid of my ice cream coma, I also walked around Hamburg for a while and threw around some confetti pieces. :)

Eeeeeeeks, tons of ice cream happiness!

This was just a super perfect short trip with seeing Hamburg, meeting friends and lovely blogger pals and eating the most delicious ice cream. Thanks for having me, Ben & Jerry’s! :)

And again to those of you who have gotten curious: the new flavors are coming to stores this week and I can’t wait to get some more ice cream for myself. :)

Happy week!
Lu

P.S.: As you can see, this blogpost was written for a cooperation with Ben & Jerry’s, but the fact that it is a sponsored post does not touch my personal opinion!

Everything Else

Interview in the Sweet Living Magazine

January 26, 2015

Hello everyone! :) Eeeks, something exciting has happened, I have been featured on three pages in the current issue of the extremely beautiful Sweet Living Magazin.

I’m in there with an interview and some photos of my projects, it’s just so incredibly exciting!

In case you haven’t seen this pretty magazine and my feature, yet, make sure to grab an issue, it’s full of colorful and bright living inspiration and the pages have the prettiest layouts and elements. :)

Happy day, have a lovely week!

Everything Else

Giveaway with Prinz Apfel

January 18, 2015

Hello everyone, happy Sunday evening! Today I have another giveaway for you: do you know Prinz Apfel? This is German and means ‘Prince Apple’ and it’s the name of a super cute German indie label. Mathias, Birgit and Jasmin, the three people who make the magic happen, provided me with a calendar, a tote bag and a print which one of you can win, yippie! :)

Everything is full with lovely details, this cute dinosaur was part of the envelope which arrived at my home.

When looking at the calendar I couldn’t stop smiling, everything is illustrated to passionately and the texts are hilarious. :)

The calendar has pages for each week and there’s plenty of space for additional notes.

The birdy tote bag has the cutest screen print design.

Isn’t the cute dinosaur art print cute and colorful and full of happiness?

To enter this giveaway, simply enter your e-mail adress below. The giveaway is open internationally, ends on Sunday, January 25 at 6 p.m., and I’m then gonna draw a winner randomly. I will contact the winner via e-mail and draw another winner in case I don’t get a response withing 14 days.

Good luck and check out Prinz Apfel’s about page on their webseite, it is so damn cute!
Happy Sunday evening!
Lu

P.S.: They also have a wonderful Prinz Apfel DaWanda shop.

This blogpost was written due to a cooperation, but this fact does not touch my personal opinion!

AAAAAAND THE WINNER IS: petra.schnitzler(at)googlemail(dot)com – hooray!!!

Everything Else

And The Winner of radbag’s Fujifilm Instax Polaroid Camera Is…

January 10, 2015

Hey everyone, happy Saturday! Do you remember that two weeks ago I introduced you to my brand new Fujifilm Instax Mini Polaroid Camera which I got from radbag?
Apart from talking about the camera and showing you my first steps with it, I also asked you to participate in a photo challenge in order to win your own camera.

Many of you submitted creative photos on Instagram (see all submissions of the #radbagphotochallenge here) and it was really hard to decide on a winner. I told you that I would pick the winner with the most creative, charming or funny entry and I finally decided on a photo which combines several of those elements:

Thank you so much for participating with your camera couple, dear hakunamakatha, your photo is just too cute! Congratulations for winning a polaroid camera!! :)
I loved that this photo is about photography in general and shows her passion for this hobby, that one can see a creative effort and that it is also super charming and made me laugh and smile.
The text under the photo says (in German):
“Helga
& Holga – frisch vermählt – würden sich sich über Nachwuchs freuen,
um die Welt fortan analog zu dritt erkunden zu können.”
Such a cute idea! So congratulations and have tons of fun with your camera, can’t wait to see some first results!

Because it was hard to pick a winner due to all of those lovely entries, I decided to at least show some of my other favorites here in this blog post (please don’t be sad if your photo isn’t shown here, there were to many good ones):

1. fuchsmaedchen posted a lovely double exposure shot and talked about creative and social work and about slowing down sometimes.
2. miniherz 21 told a super cute story about being kind to each other and about strangers who took a photo of her during her holidays.
3. candeeland_de loves double exposure shots as well. Love the ferris wheel in your portrait!
4. _maria__ma has an impressive camera collection.
5. tagtraeumerinde made double exposure with a mirror, such a cute idea!
6. trashpilotin talks about analogue photography and shows her wonderfully colorful shot.
7. lebe_schoen has included a polaroid camera in her hand-drawn wishlist.
8. _mariposa_ made a lovely double exposure shot by accident while sharing the camera with a friend.

Thank you so much for participating and make sure to check out the other nice submissions! :)
Happy weekend!
Lu

Everything Else

Advice for Using Pinterest (A Guide for Beginners)

December 28, 2014

Hey everyone! The magical Christmas holidays are over, but New Year’s Eve and 2015 are really close and coming soon. Do you have any resolutions or plans for the new year?

Pinterest has made a theme page with good resolutions for 2015, featuring many cool pinners, including me. ;)

I am normally not a big fan of resolutions, but I love making plans and lists, because they help you to stay focused and prevent you from forgetting what’s most important. Thus, I have created a pinboard with my plans for 2015:

Some of my plans are going to the seaside again, develop more own products, keep on finding beauty in the little things and seeing the mountains again. ;)

Advice for Using Pinterest (A Guide for Beginners)

Because I love Pinterest so much (next to my blog and Instagram it
surely is my fave social media platform and website), I have prepared a
little (beginner’s) guide for how to use Pinterest.

Have fun with my tips! :)

Pin your style

Let your pins and boards reflect your personal style and interests and while using Pinterest, display your own consistent aesthetic concept in all boards and on your profile. I love white with many pops of color and this can also be seen when looking at my board.

Use Pinterest as a visual portfolio tool

Why should one only have a written portfolio or a detailed presentation? Pinterest is a great tool to also build up a visual portfolio with pinning photos from press clippings, carreer milestones, photos of own projects and also customer appreciation photos if you are an indie business and sell handmade products. Moreover, this makes it even more important to varify your profile to make you more trustworthy and build a connection to your blog and brand.

Make navigation easy

When new followers come to your profile, make navigation easy for them: name your boards properly so that the names are representative for the content, use cover photos that are appealing and make everyone want to dive into the board’s pins. Also sort your boards by name or importance so that the content can easily be found.

Make your website pin-friendly

First of all, optimize your photos. Make sure that each blogpost contains not only horizontal but also vertical photos. When those are pinned, they are much more visible in your follower’s timeline on Pinterest. Also make sure that you have bright and appealing images on your blog that are worth being pinned. Moreover, don’t forget to include the pin-it button to make pinning for your readers easy and comfortable. There’s usually one below every blogpost and you can also add the button which appears when a reader’s mouse hovers over your blogpost photos (which is the button which my own blog is still missing ;)). When writing a how-to blogpost or when publishing a wrap-up post with several different DIYs, recipes, etc, make sure to create an image or graphic which is representative for the whole content so that it can be pinned and lead new readers to your blog.

Own content vs. external content

When pinning on Pinterest, pin a balanced proportion of own content and external content. Everyone will be bored when only seeing ten different photos of your recent project, so make sure to also bring new external content to Pinterest and share other people’s great photos and inspire each other.

Add a value to your pins

No matter if you are pinning your own content or photos taken by other people, make sure to add a value to your pins. This may for example be educational content like DIY tutorials, recipes or a guide for how to make a great media kit, or this may be hair styling tipps or a good photography tutorial. You could also pin a travel or city guide with your favorite places (like my Potsdam guide above), because Pinterest has implemented a map on which you can mark your favorite spots.

People like to learn from each other and Pinterest is a great platform to enrich each other’s lifes.

It’s about community, not about competition

Sharing is caring, so support each other, share great content from other bloggers and help each other to grow. Use theme group boards or open interest-based group boards onto which you pin with other pinners. This way, you can learn and profit from each other and at the same time you have a much bigger audience.

Use Pinterest as an organizational tool

Pinterest is not only a great place to share visual appealing content and to search for inspiration, it’s also a great tool for organization. On the one hand, you can use your own or other pinner’s public boards to browse for ideas, on the other hand, you can make secret boards to collect ideas for gifts, projects or party planning (like I made this secret board for planning my tropical food table last year). This is super helpful and especially the visual collection of ideas which is based on Pinterest’s visual character is great for getting a good overview and gives help when imagining the outcome of a project.

Create outstanding boards

Most people have a board for fashion inspiration, for DIY projects or home decor ideas. Why not specialize and open a board for DIY door stoppers, perfect accesories for the first day at school or a board with pretty decor ideas for a girl’s theme party with dinosaurs? Those niche boards help you to stand out in the masses and specialization in a topic is so much fun and will let you find the coolest pins.

Have lots of fun with these tips and let me know if you have any must-do Pinterest secrets! :)

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