Thursday, June 23, 2011

Make A Free, Easy, Customized Blog Header for Blogger

I just gave my blog a new look. What do you think? It has taken awhile and after many attempts I finally have what I like, for now. I have tried over and over to make blog headers, but since I am just about html illiterate it hasn't been easy until now.
 I like something that walks me through the steps. A friend told me about Picnik which is an awesome new free photo editing software program. I used it for making my blog header along with another free photo editor and storage program Picasa.
After downloading the Picnik program I chose collage on the tabs and it gave me a list of basic patterns. Next, I chose the 3 small pics where the yellow arrow is. After that, all you have to do is import the photos you want to use. You can choose from your computer, picasa, facebook, flikr, myspace, photobucket, yahoo or a website. After uploading or downloading where you want them then, you can edit or change how they are arranged.
I then rounded the corners of the pictures and shrunk the spacing to leave more background showing and clicked the done button in the upper right hand corner. It brought up a new editing screen.
There are then loads of possibilities for designs, I chose text and wrote what I wanted in the box in the upper left and chose a font I liked. There is also a box for font color and effects that make it a little more customized. 

I then chose frames and picked museum matte and changed the standard colors to match the pictures on the collage and my blog colors.

The last step was to click the save and share tab and change the dimensions. I learned the hard way that the standard size is too large to fit the blog screen. So here is a helpful hint, I shrunk it to 900x384 and saved it to a JPG file on my computer and then was able to put it in place of the text for my standard header. 
The program works wonderfully and has never made it easier to make your own customized header and it is absolutely free. That's it, the only investment needed is some time to learn how the program works, which is one of the easiest I have used. Let me know if this helps you out, it sure helped me.


2 comments:

Tancy said...

I LOVE IT!! I am in the process of getting a new look also but it all takes time and patience. But I am really impressed by the outcome of yours!

Joe said...

Nice, nice!! I really like your new look! :)