Customising Blogger ~ Advice Please!

Hi! I've been using a bog-standard Blogger theme and a shoddy homemade header for a while now, and really want to design something that looks a bit more personal. I have Photoshop but not much idea of where to start!

I'd love to hear about what fellow bloggers have done with their Blogger sites and any hints and tips! x

I use wordpress, but I'd still like to make my blog my own as well. I would like to create a header and a logo but I have no clue how to go about it, so I'm jumping on Geordies band wagon!! lol   

Hello! I use blogger, and I haven't created my own template or anything, just personalised one of the standard ones.

What I'd consider before you start doing anything is a THEME, so colours/fonts so that you can have consistency throughout. So if you decide that you are having a white/black or pink/yellow or green/purple theme, then stick to it.

Fonts wize, I wouldn't go overboard on anything too schmaltzy, just stick to something classic like Arial or Verdana, as you don't want to distract people away from your content with too much fancy flowery fonts.

Background wise, again don't pick anything that is too busy, your nails are the feature here, not shooting stars in the background, font colour wise make sure that you pick a colour that you can read well in contrast to the background on your blog posts.

Layout wise, you can quite easily customise the column widths/layout to personalise things more to how you want things. I've amended mine so that I can fit two pictures side by side on a post to make things look a bit neater.

Logo wise; I don't use Photoshop, I use GIMP but they do pretty much the same thing. Do you know what you want to put on your header? Again, I think it's important to make sure it's not too busy, but use it as a showcase of some of the nail designs you are proudest of, so the second people hit your blog, they can see some good stuff up there. Also, you don't want the height to be too large, or it'll take up most of the page. Mine is 940px × 294px which I think is a good enough size to fit some stuff in but not have it overpowering the page. I take all my pictures against a black background, so it was fairly easy to put some images against a black background on a logo so you might want to consider something similar, or put a frame/blurred effect around the edges of the image and put a few on there? Again, make sure the colour/font on your header/logo is consistent with the rest of your blog.

If you've got any ideas and you want me to have a mess around with something I'm happy to do that.

(BTW, I'm not an expert in any shape or form! So definitely feel free to dismiss my suggestions! )

That is amazing advice, thank you! The big mistakes I would have made would be to make it too busy and mess with the fonts, so I'll be extra-careful with that when I get designing ^_^

I'm working on mine too at the moment. Just started a blog and trying to jazz up the layout a bit, and make my own header.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] has some useful stuff to help customise your blog, buttons and widgets etc.

I'm in the process of tidying up my blog a bit, I'm fed up of how unprofessional it looks, but there's not much I can do about it with my level of skill lol. I definitely agree about not making things to busy though (I've seen blogs with moving patterns in the background...it's quite something...), and don't use white text on a black background, seriously messes with my eyes lol.

I had a nightmare trying to customise my Wordpress blog, in the end I just left it once it looked vaguely acceptable.

I dunno what it is with blogging sites, but every single one I've been on (Wordpress, Blogger, even Tumblr) has been a bitch to work with.