Ideas on updating your blog - part 2 and a tutorial x

Hello again and welcome to the second part of how I updated this blog. In part 1 I explained about the course I completed with Jessica Sprague and how I came to decide on the colour scheme and moodboard ideas for the blog design.


The next phase was all about colour and involved us utilising some brilliant colour sampling sites to get our own colours perfectly designed for our blogs. The sites we were pointed to are free and simple to use. On some you can work out your own colour palettes using the colour wheel, on others you are able to pick colours from your own photographs to make a completely personalised colour palette. In the end I actually found a photograph online of three colours books and used the colour picker in Photoshop Elements to choose the colours and then add them to my colour swatches stored in Photoshop. This was so cool because it then enabled me to utilise those exact colours in my header and blog posts when choosing font colours. This is really easy to do once you know where to go to within your template for your blog. I'll show you.

Firstly you need to find the colours you want and open them in Photoshop Elements. So open Photoshop Elements Editor then click file and open. I then chose the picture with the book covers I liked.

Next point your mouse to the paint dropper tool and then click with the paint dropper on the colour you want to pick. The colour will now appear on the left panel as the foreground colour 



Next move over to the right panel and click on Colour swatches. This opens up all the colours in Photoshop. Clcik onto the little square next to the dustbin and you're square of picked colour with appear at the bottom of the swatches. This means it is saved as a colour swatch for your use in Photoshop.

Finally, and for this you need a pen and paper, come back to the foreground colour and click on the square you picked out. This will then open the colour menu for that colour from which you can make colours you want within that colour range. On the righthand side of the window you will see a long list of numbers. Right at the bottom is the final number which is what you need to write down on your paper if you want to use it in your blog. So now we can use our colour in the blog we are designing.

Now come over to your blog, I am using Blogger obviously as I only know what to do here I'm afraid. Come to Blogger and open your design template and click on Customise. This will open up this page...........

Next click on Advanced the following page opens...............

Click on Post title ..............

This opens up the page with colour and font options. If you want to change your font style then you can practise on this page. I eventually chose the handwritten styled ''Homemade apple''. The place to change your font colour is the next box where you a  # sign and a numbers with a colour in the next box. This is where we place the numbers and figures you wrote down when we were in Photoshop. So this is easy, simply delete the number in the box and type in your numbers but make sure you add a  # sign before those numbers/figures. Then your colour should automatically appear in the little box. Magic. Now click on the save button and all your changes are made on your blog. You can see how it looks in the panel below the template design menu.

If you want to change the font/colour on the gadgets on your blog you follow the same process but via the gadget title menu.

And now you should have a beautifully styled colour for your blog post titles and gadget titles. I hope this has helped you learn a little bit more about what you change on blogger and also how Photoshop can aid in your designing adventure. If you have any questions then why don't you send me an email.

Ideas on updating your blog - part 1 x

Hello everyone and firstly a BIG thank you for the really helpful and supportive comments you have left me for my new blog design. It's not completely finished because the class is still running but I thought I would share a few snippets to explain how and why I changed.

So firstly, I have had alot of time sitting here feeling ill but when I have had good days or parts of days, I've tried to keep my mind active and ticking over. I have done a few Photoshop classes with Jessica Sprague before and am on her mailing list, so when a class called ''Bloom your blog'' landed in my inbox I thought, ''Oooh that sounds interesting!''.
The lovely thing about Jessica's classes is that everything is explained clearly and simply, you do need to know how to use Photoshop Elements or Photoshop, there is always loads of class downloads and video tutorials as well as handouts, and there is a class forum for this class to share queries and advise. The cost was also very good for a class like this. So I jumped in and joined the class.

Secondly, I have never really used much of myself in my blog design, plenty in blog posts but not what you would call alot of me. I wanted something fresh and simple but with a hint of my personality and interests. One of the first things we had to do was create a colour scheme we like and this was very much based on colours which appealed to us but also, and more importantly, colour linked to our personality. I have always been drawn to pinks, lemon and blue shades  so most of my mood board was in those colours. Jessica also encouraged us to look at colour psychology and I found an excellent graphic design site which explained this very clearly.

Pink is a  feminine, romantic, compassionate, warm and nurturing

 Blue is an intelligent colour, it’s logical, ordered, calm and efficient, coolness, serenity even and trust

 Yellow is an emotional colour, it exudes emotional strength, self esteem and friendliness.

Having read around the subject of colour and psychology I knew I had found the right shades for me and my blog. I want my readers to feel welcomed and have a sense of friendliness when they arrive, and over time I hope that my readers find coming here to be a positive, uplifting and interesting experience. If you want to find out more about colour psychology, then pop over here to read more.

The third part of this process was to find the perfect colours and ideas for the new image. For this I am so grateful I have developed a love of Pinterest. It is the perfect place to look for colour, style and design ideas, plus it can link you to places you never expected to go. I firstly looked at the different colour palettes and made a selections of these which I really liked and was particularly struck by the more chalky colours. They seemed more fresh and muted than the main colours I'd chosen. Once I had pinned down exactly what I was looking for I spent alot of time looking at other blogs. This was great for identifying the style of blog I liked and the extra little pieces I felt I wanted to add to my blog such as a new photo of myself and some linked buttons so my readers could contact and follow me and get to Pinterest easily.

So here are just a few of the things I pinnned....................

No 3 : came a from blog called The Ardent Sparrow
No 1: This card of colours came from The Photo Card Boutique 
No 2: You can also find great colour combinations at Design Seeds
I really loved Kristin's blog design especially here circular photo and the tab top pages. 
I also loved the style and colouring of design guru Will's blog  

You can find my full Pinterest board here
 
I hope this will help other bloggers gain a taste of what we learned and I be back with another part soon.