Mushrooms of the Jungle - Theme

Another theme created today. It's got a bit of an Alice in Wonderland, slighty mad theme which definitely appeals to me. 

It's a two column layout with a customisable header - you can download the header and put your own blog name and logo on it. It also has a top bar menu and a really graphical footer.

To get this theme:

[will upload later tomorrow]

Tutorial: Creating a Test Blog for Designs

If you're designing your own website or blog, as a rule of thumb you should never design it on your live site. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, if you have already published your site to people and its likely to have traffic, its never good for customers/clients/readers to see a blog in a half designed state. If you're editing your HTML and CSS on your live site then there's a good chance someone will come along and see it when the layout is all over the place - but they wouldn't know that you were in the middle of designing - they may just assume thats all there was to your site, and leave and never come back.

Secondly, its very easy to make mistakes when you're designing, especially if you're new to it. With just a semi colon out of place, you might suddenly find that your whole layout is broken, and if you hadn't backed up your original design, you'd be stuck with a broken template and lots of work to either fix it or repersonalise an old template.

By using a test blog, you can safely make changes to your designs away from the eyes of the public, while keeping all your current content safe and avaialbe to view until your ready to switch over your design. You can also make as many changes as you like safe in the knowledge that if something went wrong, your original blog is still protected.

So what's the best way to do this?

Sunny Days Theme - for Serena

Here's my first ever Blogger theme, which worked out really well for a first attempt. I made it specifically for my little sisters amazing beauty blog 'Another Rainy Tuesday' which you should totally check out if you're interested in hair or makeup and want some great reviews.

This theme was created using Just So Scrappy's 'Sunny Days' Digital Scrapbook Kit.

Preview of Sunny Days Theme

 So, here's what you need if you want to download this theme (aka if you're Serena!):

Right click links and click 'Save Link As/Save Target As'

The code:

Code Download
 
To put this in, you need to go to Template > Edit HTML > then replace all the previous code with the code above, then click Save Template.

The header image:

Header Download

Once you've downloaded this , you need to go to Layout, click 'edit' on your Header Gadget, remove any current images, then upload the downloaded header image. Make sure you click 'instead of title and desciption'  and don't click 'Shrink to Fit'.

Sidebar items:

In the layout, you will see that there are two HTML/Javascript gadgets.

In the first, you will want to click 'edit', and input the following under content (this is your Home button):


<a href="REPLACETHISWITHLINKTOYOURHOMEPAGE"><img width="180px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJkHjwx3RrjctKxsf2rysU1UqoJlj8d_1PqZXxyhyphenhyphenXLanIhE6ll76ZDIcr0u15XTMz1F-yFi9jrH21t8DGBrWYZbT0D2uFgRiCjCU9o9oLmqkennrDr26tG1QpD4Up_jYHC8wND8ArKCQ/s1600/buttonhome.png" /></a>

In the second, you'll need to click 'edit' again, and then paste this in under content, which will be the button for your About page.

<a href="REPLACETHISWITHLINKTOYOURABOUTPAGE"><img width="180px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBaHh0ezLkNGYBqJ_GSWuyBjr9DBp08EhqeZqsg36GWQGpyVYrAaec-wTGDPNEwkwkFMXFbNjKwEsnBY-GojCSK0uLIrwIQXVIVHfpBsjm72VT4oJ2kBnRymBs8gJ3tApbZ8Dm2ty5yK8/s1600/buttonabout.png" /></a>
Make sure you replace the section in capital letters with the appropriate links on your page.

Finally, there is a gadget called 'About Me'. You'll want to download this photo:

Photo Download

and put it next to image. You do want to click 'shrink to fit' here. And then under caption, write a short, one sentence about me to give your followers a quick idea of who you are.

That should be everything you need to get your blog theme up and running! But just let me know if anything doesn't work out, and I'll get on it. (Also if it's easier Serena I could just log in and put it up for you if you don't have the energy to do all this) xxx

Introductions

Hi!

My name is Lizzie, I'm a web designer and developer, and a recent discover of the world of digital scrapbooking. To me, these seem like the perfect combination - beautiful layered elements brought together to make friendly and cheerful designs for websites. I'm particularly interested in designing blog themes as there's so much demand for them at the moment, so this blog will not only help me showcase my designs, but help me learn to improve my skills.