It All Started with a Broken Button

Inside This Artist Website Update: What I’ve Been Working On

This week I’ve been deep in a new painting series and navigating an artist website update. It all started when a friend told me my subscribe button didn’t work—a tiny detail that sent me into a full-on redesign spiral. What I thought would be a small fix quickly turned into something much bigger.

That little subscribe button had been sitting on my site for months. It looked fine. I had no idea it wasn’t functioning—and even less of an idea how to fix it. That moment set off a full-blown website spiral, and suddenly, I was knee-deep in a website update as an artist.

This is actually my second time making a website. The first time, I had no idea what my objective was or how to go about showing my work online. I was figuring things out as I went, with no clear roadmap. The second time, I started from scratch with a much better understanding of what I wanted my site to do—and more importantly, how I wanted it to feel.

Now that I have a clearer direction, and I’m building Please Hold Studio out and integrating it into the website, all the edits and hours spent researching finally have purpose. For the first time, I really know what I’m working toward—and that feels good. This artist website update has been equal parts rewarding and frustrating—but it’s pushing me closer to a digital space that actually feels aligned.

What I’ve Been Working On:

• Redesigning the Homepage:
  It needed more clarity and more magic—so I’ve been reworking the layout, copy, and flow to better reflect who I am as an artist right now. Not just what I was doing a year ago.
• Setting Up Please Hold Studio Properly:
  PHS is finally starting to live online the way it lives in my mind. This part’s been exciting—seeing O’s world expand with intention and care.
• Learning New Tools (and Cursing at Them):
  I installed new plugins, figured out how to hide pages from the search bar (yay!), and also spent way too much time trying to place images exactly where I wanted them. Spoiler: it didn’t always work. Cue dramatic sighs and lots of Googling.
• Newsletter Magic (Take Two):
  I added a shiny new subscribe box (which actually works now!). If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do that HERE—I promise it won’t break this time.

The Honest Part:

There were moments this week when I wanted to toss my computer out of my 9th floor window and forget about the entire thing. But every morning, with my list of edits in hand, I sat down when my head was more clear and tried again.

Albert Einstein said, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
That has absolutely proven true when it comes to building and maintaining my website.

Doing a website update as an artist means wearing 100 hats—and sometimes the “web developer” one feels like it doesn’t quite fit. But I’m reminding myself that these growing pains are worth it. The digital space I’m creating now will support everything I want to build later.

What’s Next:

• Finalizing the homepage copy
• Cleaning up navigation
• Getting the shop page up and running (soon!)
• Writing up some fun little intro blurbs for PHS

If you’ve ever felt stuck somewhere between vision and execution, you’re not alone. I’m living it in real time. But the progress feels good—and I can’t wait for you to see the final version when it’s all polished up. The next step in my artist website update is finalizing the homepage and preparing the shop page for upcoming drops.

Thanks for being here and following along as I document this website update as an artist—the digital glow-up continues!

Curious about how Please Hold Studio came to life? Take a peek at the intro blog to get the full story.

Stay tuned,
xo
Alla