Blog Redesign

I figure that since I've made the switch from Wordpress to Blogger, I owe you at least some sort of explanation.

See, at the beginning of the year I made some goals for myself, like any good human being would.  And since one of those goals was to post more often on my blog, I figured it was a good idea to spruce the place up a bit and make it somewhere that I'd like to visit. (PS - I know I've let you down with not posting twice a week already.  I'll get better - promise).

So, I set to work at making a list of things I'd need to do in order to really up the ante with this place.  Things like, designing a new header, making buttons for my sidebar, learning basic CSS, were all abundant on this list.  I found an inspiration photo for a color scheme that I really loved and got to work sketching out ideas.

 

I thought about the things I loved in other designs and eventually decided on something I could create in Microsoft Word.  That's right.  I created my graphics in Word.  I have no access to Photoshop and heck, this turned out sort of awesome.  I fine tuned my work and sent out rough drafts to friends.  Let me stop for a minute and say how important it is to have true friends yuo can bounce ideas off of and have them give real feedback.  It seriously makes this process so much better.

Anyway, so I finally finished my header and sent myself a screenshot of it to work as my image file for CSS.  I moved on to the sidebar buttons, which were a lot easier once I knew what look I was going for.  BTW, I LOVE those buttons.  They're so cute.  Key to that? Downloading fun fonts from dafont.com.

So, I figured out the final layout for my blog and realized there was a major issue.  Wordpress.com doesn't allow for customer CSS! At least not without paying a monthly premium.  So I had to decide whether or not I wanted to change platforms over to Blogger, who does allow custom CSS, or adapt to the predetermined layouts.  Obviously, I switched.  And I couldn't be happier.  I love the way that this looks now.  It's beautiful, and I feel like it really expresses my personality....somehow.

Maybe I'm nuts.  Okay, I'm nuts.  Either way, don't you love the new look?