DIY Blog Design: my experience

Hey, what do you think of my facelift?  I’m happy with it…I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now.  As I have mentioned, I’m really not the most tech-savvy person that ever lived.  But I thought, well, there are tons of tutorials out there on how to do this sort of thing, so I’m sure I could figure it out!  And while that’s true, and I did pretty much figure it out, it took a LOT longer than I expected it to.  Of course, I foolishly thought I could knock out a new blog in about, oh, an evening.  Um…nope.  If you have the time (not that I do) and the inclination, here are some great resources I found:

Makin' Cute Blogs – such a wealth of information on DIY blog design.  Tons of tutorials.  I followed a video tutorial to figure out Pixlr (see below) and do my layout – so helpful! 

ColourLovers – that’s where I made my background.  It is a really fun site where you can “color” patterns and play around.  Rather addictive.

Pixlr – it’s like a dumbed-down version of the dumbed-down version of Photoshop.  (Did I say “dumbed-down?”  I think I meant “simplified.”)  Which is perfect for me.  I don’t need all the crazy stuff; I just need to like, arrange a few cute little graphics and save them as an image.  Oh, and Pixlr is free, and you don’t have to download anything.  Love it!

Shabby Princess – such cute graphics, many of them free.

Star Sunflower Studio – ditto on the cute free graphics.

Photobucket – really easy-to-use site for hosting images, so I don’t have to have them all cluttering up my desktop.  Oh wait, they’re still there, cluttering up my desktop.  But if I wanted to, I could take care of that.  Photobucket makes it easy to copy & paste MAGICAL AND MYSTERIOUS CODE into your blog’s template.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it…questions, comments, suggestions?  I’m open to them!