Makin the Blog Cute Part 1

I've had a few people ask questions about the scarythreateninglooming tedious work of blog html.  Sooo, I thought I'd try doing a series of how-tos.  I'd kind of been not doing it for a while because my real-life bff, Courtney over at Not So Homemade has done quite a few and I told her I didn't want our blogs to be the same or me run a tutorial after she already had, blahblabla.  But the truth is we both know enough about coding and we do have slightly different blog friend circles, so I feel ok about it now.  ohmylanta.


As somewhat of an intro, I thought I'd talk about programs first.  There are a ton of free programs that you can access to help you do everything to make your own blog, your own-completely unique.  I also have a few preferences I'll share.


Web Browsers.
     You might ask what the hayday a web browser has to do with how you blog, but I personally think it makes a difference.  Let me tell you, I heart Mozilla Firefox big time!  It has been my technical bff for years!  It has super awesome gadgets (known as plug-ins/add-ons) like Ad-Block Plus(I love watching missed tv shows sans those annoying little car & cellphone commercials), Personas & ColorfulTabs (hello!  we're people who like for things to look cute!), Fireshot (allows you to take screen shots of the browser, perfect for making step by step tutorials), and one of my personal favourites...Colorzilla, which places an eyedropper in your bottom left corner that you can click on at any time to pick a color from any web page.  This will make coordinating colors on your blog a piece of cherry pie!  You simply hover over any color, grab the Hex Color Code and plug it in to any program you're using to create fonts, backgrounds, banners, buttons, or whatever!  Firefox is superb, but don't just take my word for it....go get it!  It's the first step in making your blog cute.  


Image Manipulation/Editing/Creating Tools.
     Ok, I have Photoshop CS3 Extended, BUT only on my laptop.  I don't have a cd for it anymore so I don't have any way of getting it on mine & my husbands desktop.  So, if I have to be on the clunker, I have a few more options:
          To do just about anything cs3 can, I go with Paint.net and sometimes Gimp.  They're awesome generics.  If you're as jealous as I am of people with 24" Cricuts that can print out anything they can plug in from their computer...just....for....Photoshop....instead, try these out.  You can download them to your computer in minutes and they also have an impressive amount of plug-ins comparable to cs3's.  There's another that I just heard about a couple of days ago, Pixlr.  It doesn't look like you download it directly, but do your editing online.  I honestly don't know much about it, but it's always nice to have options.

Simple Photo Editing Tools.
    Once again, Photoshop is great for everything...but for really easy super user friendly free editing you have a few more options.  Back in college, a friend introduced me to Picasa by Google.  Like Wal-Mart and Apple, Google seems to just be taking over the world--but that's not necessarily a bad thing--they put out some great stuff (except Chrome, I hate it).  I always use Picasa to at least paste my blog name on all my pictures (so nobody up & try to steal em!).  You can pull out text to whatever size you want at whatever angle you want onto a photo.  You can also adjust hue, saturation, shadows & highlights, & make a photo b&w or sepia toned at the touch of a button.  Another editor I frequent a lot is Picnik.  It's online based, so you simply register, choose the free version or the professional (I think it's something like $24 a year).  The free version is definitely still great though.  It basically allows you to run 'Actions' you may have heard of in Photoshop lingo.  They're preset adjustments to make your photo look softer, gritty, film grainy, night vision, like a movie screen, or my personal favourite: like a 60's photograph, plus a ton more.  They also have holiday themed edits...right now they have super sweet halloween edits.


Alright...there you have a picture of my web building arsenal.  Try out all of these, I promise you'll love them!

In Part 2, I want to talk about all of the things you want to have on your blog focusing on color/font/theme coordinating your site.  Check back later!  Peace & go Make Your Blogs Cute!!