My Blog Makeover

I am really excited to share my new blog design!  I think I have as much fun changing up my blog as I have changing up my house! Except it takes a whole lot longer to change up my blog.  I have zero experience in this kind of thing.  I just sort of wing it.  And do a lot of Google searches.  And cry.  Ok well actually there were no tears.  But I thought about it a couple of times.  :-)

So how did a complete novice make a new header, blog button, center the navigation bar, and tweak my borders?  With the help of my friends.  No, they aren't my real life friends (although it would be cool if they were because they are super smart).  They are my blog friends.  And they are awesome at explaining how to do your own blog stuff.

Yesterday, I told you about Kim at Cheap Chic Home.  She's the one who shared all that info to get my "Featured" and "Where I Link" pages looking better.  That was the first step.  It sort of snowballed from there.

I knew that I had to learn a new photo editing site - now that Picnik is closing.  So I downloaded GIMP.  And I soon realized that this was way over my head.  I had no idea how to even get started.  So, I went on the hunt for something a little easier.  I downloaded Pixlr.  (Side note - when I downloaded Pixlr, I had no idea there was a Pixlr Express.  I assume it is similar to Picnik - and I'm looking forward to trying it.)  It did take a while to figure out this photo editing program.  It really isn't as user friendly as Picnik.  But once I started adding layers and text, it was fun.  And I know that I haven't even scratched the surface on all that this program can do. But I wanted my header to be simple.  And I like the result.

I could probably throw together a small tutorial of the how-to's for the header.  If anyone is interested, please leave a comment.  I didn't really search out much help.  Again, I just winged it.  But the more I played around with it, the more comfortable I became.  And the more fun I had.  I would recommend giving it a try.

After designing my header, I was still trying to figure out how I could make it wider and more in line with my blog.  Another Google search brought me to Cindy at Cinsarah.  She has a beautiful blog - which she designed herself.  And she has a bunch of tutorials for the novice blog designer.  I found so many answers.  I learned how to get rid of the padding (so my header would be wider).  That's also where I found the coding to center my navigation bar (all of those tabs under my header).  She made it very easy.  Yay!

Trying new things isn't easy.  And I know my blog still needs some work (I'm still tweaking it).  But I love learning new things and I'm glad I took the time to do my blog makeover by myself.  It was a fun little break from painting!