Welcome to the brand-new Jewel Divas Style.

This is something that has been brewing for the last few months. In fact, since late last year.

And even though the plan to update this site, as stated in the yearly plan, was slated for December 23/Jan 24, I was so excited about this new theme that I re-organised everything so it could happen sooner.

And it did.

For the first business break of the year, I updated the blog theme and overall look of JDS, including brand new logos which I made back in February to be similar in style to mine at Tiara King, and had 295 blog posts from my author website, L.J. Diva, migrated over. They have their own category of L.J. Diva Posts and are easily found in the new category widget in the side bar. But beware, some of the formatting is bad and I won’t be updating them. They’re a very interesting range of posts, from movie, tv, and book reviews, to all manner of thoughts on topics from the last decade plus. Some quite controversial. I had the remaining 387 posts from LJD migrated to Tiara King (after culling nearly 2000 posts over the last few years from LJD), which I also made some tweaks to and made the blog live so I can post there moving forward.

I’ve made the decision to close LJD after fifteen years, and T.K. Wrathbone after eight years, and will do so on September 19^th, 2023. Normally I would release a new book on this date in honour of the passing of Jackie Collins, but since I made the choice to not publish this year, I’ll be closing two websites on this date instead. I’ve also deactivated those pesky second Twitter accounts I didn’t really want, and both Instagram accounts. All that’s left is their Facebook pages.

Because I was so excited about updating everything, I’ve been very busy and working long days, (and there were major issues in going live) but that’s just fine because this is freaking awesome!

And in the long run, this is a major part of the plan that started in September 2021 which I talked about in the first few posts back in 2022 about changes and getting back to before. Links below.

Cha-Cha-Changes

More Changes Are Happening

Jewel Divas Style Plans for 2023

A part of me can’t wait to stop blogging on a weekly schedule. I even considered it for this year, but then I had so many things to talk about, and do, and talk about doing, oi…

 

And now onto to some back-end stuff.

In the lead up to this current, and probably last, blog overhaul, I sorted through my categories once again, possibly for the fourth or fifth time in this blog’s history, and tightened them up in time for the importing of the posts from L.J. Diva.

After deleting and adding, I narrowed it down to 29 categories before the migration, but after migration there are 37. So, here’s a brief look at what’s happened. And remember, we now have a category widget in the sidebar, so all categories are available to see under that, as well as the menu.

Since Jewel Divas is no longer in business, I rounded up all of the JD jewellery posts under the three categories of Jewel Divas Couture, Jewel Divas Jewellery Business, and Jewel Divas Jewellery Collections. They can be seen under the “Jewel Divas – The Jewellery Label” section in the menu which you can click on and see ALL of the jewellery under Jewel Divas.

As I’ll be moving posts about my books to Tiara King in the future, all previous book posts about my books have been rounded up under the category of Tiara King’s Books which can be seen under the two categories of Books and Business. This also means that all of my other book posts, such as Nancy Drew, Jackie Collins, Megan Hess, etc, have been cleaned up, and the category of My Book Collections has been added to accommodate all of my, you guessed it, book collections. Book Style will stay the same, but I’ve added Book Reviews since I have done so many and will continue doing them in the future.

Places I Want to Go, and the two “how to put together a travel kit” posts were moved under Travel Style. Style Failures was moved under the labels of Accessories, Fashion, and Jewellery Style, and even Book Style. And yes, Jewellery Style is a new category that houses jewellery making, storage, and any posts to do with jewellery.

Kits, and My Obsessions were rolled into other categories such as Book Style, Nancy Drew, Fashion Style, etc. Lust Nots, and a few smaller categories, were cleaned up or deleted back in January. Lust Haves and How To are back again after being deleted earlier this year, and Quote of The Week was added for L.J. Diva. They’re quite…interesting.

Health and Beauty Style have been separated into two categories. Miss Phryne Fisher was moved under Screen Style, which will stay the same, but I’ve added Movie Reviews, and Music & Radio. Press from Press & Social Media moved under Press & Publicity, and Social Media joined with Websites to become Websites & Social Media. I’ve also come up with the categories of Humans, to cover the categories of human behaviour and the English language, and the World, that came from LJD, and L.J. Diva gets her own category so you can easily see all of the posts that came over.

The rest have stayed the same, but were cleaned up, and many posts were pinpointed into their categories properly. And many posts from a decade plus ago are getting new “featured image” covers to make things simpler and cleaner when searching category pages. 

Tags were cleaned up as well, not that I show them on the posts. Many were the same as the categories and some changed, but there are a few extras, like collectibles and human behaviour. I deleted the colour tags I’d put on my personal jewellery collection posts, such as green, blue, pink, etc, and the shopping and glamour tags. No real need for those. Any tag that had barely any posts to it, went.

The categories have also been cleaned up in the menu bar.

 

Now onto a closer look at the new JDS. But some history first…

Jewel Divas Style started on Blogspot on July 22, 2009 as Jewel Divas Jewellery. Jewel Divas was already taken, and still is, but she only posted in 2008 and not since. She also had a store on Etsy. Personally, I think abandoned blogs should be deleted by Google, to give someone else a go at the name, and simply because they would be clogging up the system.

Jewel Divas on Blogspot

I changed templates a few times until 2012 when I changed the name to Jewel Divas Style, and then moved to WordPress in July 2013. I can’t even remember the theme I had after moving to WP, and before January 2016 when it was updated to the Mod Blogger theme. I changed the background in 2017, and again in 2020, even had a Style Store for a year or three which went nowhere. But here we are today, with a new theme and new look.

 

The header images have changed so much. A few of them have been these…

From this

To this…

To this...

And now this…

By using a similar style to my TK header images, I figured it would help to align JDS to Tiara King. To have that cohesion as a brand.

The name, Jewel Divas Style, is in the same pink and blue as Tiara King. I used similar fonts, and made the tagline the same style of rainbow. The boxes are a little different, but it adds to the uniqueness, while keeping it similar.

 

The small logo has two styles in two shapes and has gone from this

To this…

I started with the square shape and made JDS and JD Style, and then realised that most social media logos are round, so made circular ones as well.

All header and logo images were done on black, white, and transparent backgrounds. I personally think the black background looks better for both the JDS and TK logos, as the colours stand out better.

 

Theme

I knew I wanted another “blogging” theme similar to what I had with the Modern Blogger Pro. Something that would have the latest post at the top, and a grid formation for the rest. I looked at a few free ones in the WordPress shop, looked at a few more on sale sites, and then I found her. The Blogger WordPress Theme by Pixelwars on Envato Market.

I went with the Judy Froster version simply because it has the most built-in styles to choose from, from the way the homepage looks, to the way blog posts look. It comes with 15 pre-made demos, so you can pick any you like, and you can choose elements from each demo to create your own.

It also has 13 single post styles so each post can look completely different with various classic and overlay styles, as well as audio and video posts, slider and gallery posts, and chat posts. Have you ever seen a chat post? I hadn’t until I saw this blog theme. The theme allows parallax pictures, full pictures, left sided, right sided, full paged, overlay and inline, the works, in any blog post you desire to use them in.

I’ll be doing all kinds of post styles in the future, and thankfully, all of my previous posts picked up the classic theme and turned out okay (besides a few minor formatting issues) when it was updated, but I’m squeeing with excitement at all of the new things I can do.

In fact, I haven’t been this internally excited about something in a good while. I may not show it on the outside, in fact I probably look downright ancient after all the work I’ve put in, (two weeks of late nights and the last five of staying up till 2 a.m.) I am absolutely overwhelmed with the way this theme looks and all of the exciting ideas, layouts, and working parts it has and how that means I can move forward while looking professional, yet fun and funky. Does anyone still use the word funky? This theme, and the way I’ve worked it, looks fresh, exciting, and incredibly updated over the ones I’ve had in the past, and it’s definitely one I’ll keep for a good while.

I used ClickWP for the migration of blog posts, whom I’ve used for many things in the last few years, and the uploading of the theme to make sure everything worked properly before I went to work updating colours, styles, and logos.

 

The future

I wanted a more mature theme moving into semi-retirement in 2024 when I turn 50. I want to spend more time writing and publishing, so want less to worry about, and don’t want to spend so much time on my website or socials. I’ve done a wide variety of time on multiple blogs over the years. I went from blogging whenever I wanted, to twice a week, to three times a week, to five times a week, back to two, down to one, and then once a month, and now barely on my two author sites while I concentrate here.

I’ve been doing weekly here at JDS for years now, and while it’s been doable, sometimes it’s been undoable and so things need to change.

I won’t be blogging a lot on Tiara King, either, now I’ve set up the blog, just every now and then when there’s a story on authors, books, writing, or publishing, business and legalities, or a new release, or I’ll dispute some insecure author claiming we all suffer from a particular “syndrome” that isn’t even a real mental illness and started off being called a phenomenon. So, again, just every now and then. But it will be more manageable moving forward to cut out two more websites, saving money, time and energy.

Everything’s been moved to TK, and come September, LJD and TKW will close down. Come the end of the year, JDS will slow down and you’ll just have to wait until 2024 to see what happens then.

 

So…what did you guys get up to over the last two weeks?