Beauty and Bentley

I have been blogging for a little over a year now and I still consider myself a beginner but over that time I've learnt a lot and created a little kit of essentials that I use to run my blog and create new content so I thought I'd share those with you today. Quite a few of these items you can actually do without when you first start a blog, so long as you have a way to write and take pictures you can start blogging and at the beginning that's enough! Some of these items are investment pieces so you want to make sure blogging is something you truly enjoy and want to pursue before you start spending all your hard earned cash on it. 

Laptop/Computer

The first thing you need to start up your blog is a computer or laptop so that you can get your blog set up and write your blog posts. I use a Sony Vaio that I've had for a few years now and although it's slightly beaten up it still works fine, I will probably upgrade this at some point in the future but it's not at the top of my list of priorities.

Smartphone

This is probably the number one essential that you will need, these days you can do so much on your phone if you didn't have a laptop/computer you can even write up your posts using your mobile. I currently have the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and when I started out I used the camera to take all of my photos, the camera quality is great so don't feel like you need to invest in an expensive camera right away. I'm constantly using my phone to check my social media, respond to comments and check how my blog posts are performing. I also use my phone to edit all of my photographs and I've created a post talking about my favourite apps to use so if you want to read that click here. I'm now eligible for an upgrade so I may be getting my hands on a new phone soon, I'm trying to decide between the Samsung Galaxy S9 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 but right now both are so expensive so I'm waiting for the cost to come down a little.

Camera

This is by far the biggest investment I have made in blogging, I wanted a good camera for a long time and a few months back I bought the Olympus Pen e-pl8 which cost roughly £400! I saved up some money to put straight towards this camera and have been paying off the rest for the last few months. This was expensive but I do love it, it's small stylish and gives me great quality photographs. I won't pretend I know a lot about photography but I am trying to learn and I feel like this camera makes learning a little easier as all the settings are easy enough to figure out and play around with.

Backdrops/Props 

Okay, so once you have everything you need to take your photos and write your posts you'll need some items to help take your pictures to the next level, this is where backdrops and props come into play. These don't need to be expensive and you'll probably be able to find lots of items around your home to help style your photographs. You can use a plain white bedsheet as a backdrop to give a bright clean feel to your photos, you can also use wooden flooring and any other area around your home that looks pretty and photographs well. I picked up a piece of white card with a marble print on it from Paperchase which cost less than £2 and I use it all the time in flatlays, there are also websites that sell photography boards with all different kinds of prints which look great and I really want to pick some of these up in the future. For props I think my favourite thing to use are artificial flowers, these can be picked up so cheaply and are great for making your pictures look that little bit more pretty. The use of backdrops and props are also a great way to start creating a bit of a brand identity, the way in which you use colours, light, styling and photography can all help to create a distinct look for your blog.

External Hard Drive 

This is my most recent purchase, I bought the Seagate 1TB Ultra Slim Portable Hard Drive because my phone was constantly running out of space with the number of photos I had stored on it. This is a really great way of backing up all of your work wherever you are in such a quick and easy way. It's important to try and back up all of your work because things do sometimes go wrong and if something happens to your blog you could lose all of the posts you've created.

Phone Stylus  

I've already mentioned in this post that I use my phone all the time for editing pictures and posting on social media and my favourite social media platform is Instagram so I picked up a super inexpensive phone pen to be able to draw more easily on Instagram Stories. I got mines from eBay but you can also pick them up from websites like Amazon and they cost just a few pounds.

Notebook
I love to have a cute notebook that I use for blogging so I can make notes, write down ideas and plan out my posts. Sometimes I can't be bothered to set up my laptop and I want to quickly make some notes especially if I'm planning a review of a product I like being able to make notes throughout the day that I'll want to include in my post.


These are just a few of the essentials you might want to pick up when you start blogging, many of these are items you will already own and the others can be picked up for a reasonable price, it's important to remember that you don't need lots of very expensive and fancy products to create a blog, if you want to start blogging then just start and the rest will follow in time.

There are lots of other items I want to invest in, in the future to keep evolving my blog and improving my content but for now, these are my essentials and the items I use most often when blogging.