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To say things are busy right now would be an understatement, so apologies for being so quiet. With the day job, plus all the other things I find it impossible to say no to, I’ve been really busy behind the scenes writing up a storm.

But I did want to stop by to quickly mention that I’m currently guest blogging over at the brand new Evans Fashion Fix blog. It was a real honour to be asked to help out with the launch, and I’ve really enjoyed contributing to the blog.

I finish up and pass the baton on to another great blogger at the end of the week, but I will be back towards the end of March when hopefully I will have learned a lot more about the industry. Being involved in this project and throwing myself headfirst into the world of plus size fashion and size 16 supermodels has been a real eye opener, and I can’t wait to really get going with Big Girls Browse in the next few months off the back of what I’ve learned.

I’m still not sure I’ve got the tone of that site quite right, but after many discussions, twitter chats, emails and having read hundreds of amazing inspirational blogs, I think I now know what I want to do to fix that, so keep your eyes peeled!

I’ve also just written a Guest Curator post for the Etsy blog, The Storque. I got to pick some of my favourite things on the site – difficult considering the wealth of amazing stuff that’s available from designers across the globe. Hopefully I’ve done some of them justice!

I’ve not been here in a while. I’ve been here instead…

Joy of Clothes
- I helped out a bit with the launch of this new shop-by-body-shape site.

The Nod Celeb guide to Las Vegas
- We all know how much I love Vegas. Now I get to write about it as part of my job. Brilliant!

Dress Yourself Slimmer: Top 10 Ways to look thinner
- Because who doesn’t want to pretend they’re a size 12?

Celeb Style Steal: Party with an edge
- Going old school with some image mapping. Just like when I was 19 and writing for the kids.

Dork TV: Burn Notice
- Moonlighting as a TV pundit for Katie Lee’s new site, Dorkadore.

Domestic Sluttery
- Still going strong despite the fact I’m lazy. This is because the other girls are better than me.

Many thanks to Glenn Waldron at the Telegraph for including Catwalk Queen in a list of the top 20 best fashion blogs. Even more thanks for mentioning me by name even though I’m not writing for the site any more. It’s good to know I’ve not quite been forgotten yet! The list includes some of my favourite bloggers ever, as well as a few I’ve yet to investigate, so definitely take a look if you’re a fashion blog fan.

ps. I don’t think the quote about CQ getting more traffic than Vogue is true. It may have been once but that’s a very big brand to try and compete with!

[image via Style Bubble]

I said a while ago that I’d spent a breakfast meeting with some high street folks talking about bloggers…and last night I saw some of the results of that meeting. It was the Arcadia Online Press Day, an event especially for bloggers and online writers showcasing the best new stuff from Topshop, Miss Selfridge, Evans, Dorothy Perkins, Topman and co.

Bloggers / online press do get invited to the regular Arcadia press days earlier in the year, but there are tight restrictions on photography (especially at Topshop) and we’re limited as to what we can and can’t say so early on, so having an event a bit later, when we have free reign to snap away and write everything up as soon as we get home (or, indeed, on one of the computers they had set up in the showroom for that purpose) is fantastic.

What was even more fantastic was the photography on offer. In our meeting we’d discussed the fact bloggers love to try things on, get creative and have something unique to put on their blogs rather than cut-outs or model shots. And Arcadia really pulled it out the bag with their solution to this!

Head through a mock photobooth in the first room, and you found yourself in a photography studio with rails of samples to try on and pose in. Photos went on a USB stick so they could be blogged about straight away. Sadly I had very little time at the event because I was off to Qype’s birthday quiz, so I didn’t have chance to do this myself (I was also limited by those pesky sample sizes – the only stuff that would have fit me was the Evans stuff, and I think Tor has showcased that much better than I ever could) but loads of others did and the results are awesome. See Mademoiselle Robot, Disney Rollergirl, Miggy Likes The Internet and Style Bubble for what’s gone live so far.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what Isabelle, Rachael and Laura got up to!

EDIT: It would appear Catwalk Queen, along with most of the other women’s sites I worked on or created with Shiny Media have now been sold to the newly formed Aigua Media.

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I’m moving house tomorrow, and we’ll be without broadband for a while. I think it’ll be September before we’re sorted, and that’s quite a crazy month, so this may be goodbye for a while (unless I get bored on my lunch hour).

Before I go, though, I noticed ‘What happened to Catwalk Queen?’ is the most common search leading people to this site at the moment, so I suppose I should update.

I’m afraid I know as much as most of you. Nothing! My last involvement with the site was in April before I left my job at Shiny Media. I don’t have any claim on CQ now, and I haven’t heard whether it’s coming back following the administration. I assume it will eventually (it was always one of the most profitable Shiny sites) but it won’t be with the original team and it’ll be a very different site to the one I created when I was 18.

In the meantime, Isabelle – the fantastic editor of CQ up until July, is now writing here instead.

A few things I’ve written recently…

On The Nod: The top 10 most unusual celebrity product ranges

On Big Girls Browse: From Beth Ditto to Big Girl – trying the Evans range on for size.

On The Gumtree blog: The Gumtree guide to spotting designer fakes

On Domestic Sluttery: Five fab cake stands

Twitter regulars, friends of the company and anyone who reads the industry blogs will know that today news broke of Shiny Media going into administration.

It’s a sad, sad day for a company that I have very good memories of working for, and I am very upset not only for my good friends who have lost their jobs, but also that the future of Catwalk Queen hangs in the balance. Given the many years of hard work and love that I put into the various versions of that site, I am heartbroken that it might have to close, or worse, be bought by someone who changes it beyond recognition.

I was a very small shareholder in Shiny Media*. I was given the shares as part of the Catwalk Queen sale / partnership deal, but also in recognition of my continued loyalty. I was the company’s first employee and I stayed with them for almost five years.

Alas, it would seem that loyalty was one-sided.  I had to hear second-hand that the company was dead and my shares were liquidated. But I only lost money that I never had in the first place. I got off incredibly lightly compared to some.

It’s been a horrible day for all involved, but I am grateful to those who’ve supported my former colleagues on the editorial team (in-house and freelance) and recognised them for the brilliant, talented, creative, devoted, patient and tolerant people they are. If the continued success of ex-Shiny’s is anything to go by, I don’t think they’ll have any trouble moving onwards and upwards.

*I am not, however, the shareholder accused of switching off access to phones and email. Obviously.

To say it’s been a busy week is the understatement of the century. I’ve barely had time to sleep.

On Wednesday we launched The Nod. My new job is as editor of the site, and it’s great to see it finally go live. Now the real hard work begins! The site is all about celebrities and the products that they’ve been spotted using and wearing, and also the places they go, and links celeb profiles to lists of their ‘Nods’. Now we’re live, as well as writing editorial content, most of my day is spent researching what the Jennifers and Jessicas have been up to in the last 24 hours. Very different from Catwalk Queen, but lots of fun nevertheless.

I also soft-launched my new pet project, Big Girls Browse, a fashion blog for curvy women. Right now I’m unsure how much time I’ll have to devote to it but I still wanted to get it off the ground. I started to work on it when I thought I’d be going four days a week in my old job, and would have a day of freelance to devote to writing it and working on other projects, but with my full time commitments at The Nod, that fell by the wayside a little. I may find BGB isn’t updated as much as I’d like, but I had to give myself a chance.

I’ve been working a little bit with Gumtree to provide some content for their new blog too, just one post per week, mainly around the fashion and fun areas. Look out for my top ten pets post – so many cuties!

Finally, Domestic Sluttery hosted an amazing event last night, so thank you to everyone who came. I remember meeting Sian way back in November at a Qype event and she told me about this great idea she had for a fun domestic blog and I knew I have to be involved (though at the moment I barely contribute one post a month). It’s amazing how one little fun idea can capture so many people’s imaginations.

I have frequent bouts of sadness at the moment when I look at Catwalk Queen and realise it’s not mine to do with as I please any more. Though my new job does involve some fashion writing and research, the site (launching soon, I hope) is much broader in terms of what we cover, and I don’t get to be so involved in what’s going on in the world of fashion any more. In some ways it’s great,  as I get to read the site as a visitor and not an editor. But it’s also sad that I don’t get to do things like visit Graduate Fashion Week and tour the press days at the moment.

That said, because I came into this very early on, I spent a long time trying to help PRs get to grips with blogs, and I’m still very much involved in that area of the industry. Yesterday morning I put my blogging hat back on for a breakfast meeting with a high street brand, where we discussed fashion blogs and PRs. I was waxing lyrical about how wonderful the big PR 360 has been in terms of giving bloggers access to things, understanding how and why to work with them, and managing communications when things go wrong, and I really meant it.

Sadly, when I got to the office I was greeted with a tweet from Liberty London Girl regarding the shocking treatment of Susie Bubble by Pam Hogg’s PR, after she took some cameraphone pictures of her and a friend trying on catsuits in Hogg’s pop-up shop and put them on her blog.

I don’t even know where to begin in addressing this. I suppose in a way I don’t need to. The damage has been done, so perhaps now these people will realise that the internet is there to be embraced, not ignored. I applaud Susie for having the guts to put up a post explaning exactly what happened, especially since it may jeopardise future communications with these PRs in her day job (at Dazed Digital).

To the ladies at Pam Hogg, you can try and ‘manage’ the reputation of your brand, but I really don’t see the problem with a well-respected, award-winning fashion blogger and industry insider posting a few pics of herself having fun and looking fabulous when you’ve already happily seen your creations on WAGs in the Daily Mail.

…and I didn’t even have to mention Peaches Geldof.

Yesterday was my last day at Shiny Media, and I got some lovely little treats aside from the usual card and cava that I thought deserved to be shown here.

Firstly, from the team at Domestic Sluttery, amazing Cupcakes from Sweet Things. Such a lovely surprise, and the stars on the vanilla ones match the colours of Catwalk Queen! How gorgeous, and they tasted as yummy as they looked.

And then, my gift from the fashion team, which had me on the verge of tears because it shows how well they know me (and because I’d had the Cava by then).

It’s a survival kit for my new job. Batiste dry shampoo (cos a girl with ridiculously long hair and a hangover’s gotta sleep, rather than washing her hair) berocca (foraforementioned hangover) a butterfly clip (cos I pulled the other one apart at my desk in a fit of rage the other week), diet coke (natch) and a double decker (3pm snacktime!)

My new colleagues have a LOT to live up to!