BTY ALY is finally here!

OK, I’m so excited about this announcement that I don’t really know where to start…

(I feel that this post will go all over the place, so please be patient and forgive me if it’s the case!)

I’m finally back! I know, it took me a while. I left you hanging to dry, last November, announcing a big change and that I would come back “within a few weeks” with a brand new shiny website.

And here I am, MONTHS later! Because clearly, I didn’t realize what it meant, to create a website from scratch. It’s a long and complex process, especially since I wasn’t alone on this. Indeed, this project is not only mine, my husband and I worked together on this (to be honest, we were helped by developers, I don’t really know how to code, unlike my husband, but he already has a full-time job so it wasn’t really an option for him to do it!)

I don’t think I told you but my blog bonnie-garner.com was a wedding gift from him (I guess that’s what happens when you marry a geek ^^). When we met each other in 2010, I was reading a lot of blogs and probably because I have a rather contemplative temperament, it never occurred to me to create one myself. Also, I thought that nobody would read it, that I wasn’t really going to bring anything new into the blogging world. Creating a blog seemed quite complicated technically to me. In short, those who know me in real life know it well, I am the very definition of self-confidence wink
But my husband is the opposite when he wants to do something, he does it, that’s all! So he bought me a domain name, created a WordPress site for me and voilà!

Well, except that at the beginning, believe it or not, I didn’t really know what to write about (thinking about it makes me laugh now, I’m definitely the best to deny the obvious). I was already working in the beauty business and I stupidly told myself that if I spoke about beauty on my blog, it would be too “professional” and nobody would be interested. The blogging landscape was very different at the time. It was all about the “girl next door” spirit.

So, quite naturally, I decided to talk about makeup. At the time, I was working for a skincare brand and I missed so much being able to talk about lipstick (I’m a true lipstick addict, you already know…) Makeup was a big trend thanks to the boom of social media, so there were lots of exciting new things to explore! And the nail products fascinated me too. I even wrote an article about the permanent nail polish trend that remained top of results on Google France for years, I was so proud!

So I enjoyed writing about all these topics and to my astonishment, I even had readers! I became more confident and started to write about more various topics over the years. I even finally started talking about skincare more often and I realized that I had more comments than for the other posts. Apparently, you really like when I speak about the different skin types, the skincare ingredients etc.

Also, skincare became extremely popular recently, especially amongst young people (I hear a lot about “self-care” at the moment) and I also started to be completely obsessed with it. I didn’t start from scratch there because I studied cosmetics and worked for years as a trainer for a skincare brand, but the beauty business is constantly evolving and the knowledge I had was no longer really up to date.

I wanted to know everything, to understand all about the skin, the ingredients, the products that work, identify the phony ones, but also the successful beauty trends in the world, etc. And most importantly, I really wanted to write more on all these topics. Especially since, if I believe my statistics, I really feel that all these topics fascinate you as much as me! My skincare posts have become the most read ones on the blog, now smile

Very quickly, I also wanted a different platform to write on, a more “professional” website. This is where the idea of BTY ALY first appeared. After a lot of discussion with my husband, we started working on it and thinking about the design of this new website. I didn’t want to transform my blog, I really wanted to work on something different.

BTY ALY (the acronym/abbreviation of Beauty Alley) is, therefore, supposed to be a beauty magazine more than a blog, with different sections. I want to reassure you right away, the tone you knew here won’t really change, I’m still in charge of writing the content, so it will remain quite personal! But who knows, the formula may evolve later, why not? wink

I don’t want to seem pretentious by calling this new website a “magazine”, really not! What I mean here is that I want to be able to use this new space to write more detailed articles (and yes, longer ones too) on very various topics if they seem relevant to me.

On BTY ALY , you can find honest Reviews on different beauty products (skincare, makeup, and others), because I know that they please you, they are always very read here.
There will also be Focus on cosmetic ingredients and on brands that deserve to be better known. I absolutely wanted to write on the exciting subject of formulations! smile
Another topic, particularly close to my heart: cosmetic trends that will be in the category Articles on BTY ALY. I love to understand the origin of a trend, why it is succeeding… I’m a beauty obsessed geek! bigsmile
And finally, the last section on BTY ALY will be the Memos, where themes will be quite varied: mini-reviews, press reviews, reactions on certain topics related to beauty… The idea behind these Memos is to be a little more spontaneous (and the posts are supposed to be shorter. But you know me, I’m not really a concise kind of gal ah ah).

Regarding the future of this blog, many of you asked me about it and I don’t really have a definitive answer for the moment. It will probably stay as it is. I won’t close because even if I didn’t write anything here recently, there are still a lot of readers every day on my old posts. Quite frankly, I’m not sure I’ll have time to do both, as BTY ALY is quite time-consuming. I didn’t want to switch the content of the blog on BTY ALY because I wanted to start from scratch with a brand new concept.
So in summary, for now, you will find me more on BTY ALY and the blog remains as it is until further notice! smile

You can find the website here: BTY ALY
I’ll see you there? heart

I can’t wait to get your feedback on the new website and I really hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed and will enjoy doing it!

EDIT 22/04/18:
I wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the lovely comments I received, here and on social media! You’re the best and I feel so motivated and pumped by all the love and kindness! heart