How to Create a Header for Your Blog

Have you just started out but want a personal and professional look for your blog? Look no further…

   So as we may all know when we first start a blog (I’m new to this too!) we want something unique to us but don’t want to have to fork out the pounds to pay a professional, well here is a really easy way to make your own professional looking blog header for Blogger.(This may also work for other blogging platforms such as Wordpress but I personally use Blogger). I think the first thing that is really important to consider is what type of blog you want: do you want a theme? What kind of look do you want? After all, your header is technically the first thing readers/visitors will see of your blog. FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE EVERYTHING. I decided I personally wanted something fairly fresh and simple but arty and slightly ‘soft-grungey’ I guess that’s what it’s called. As you might have noticed by the header (subtle I know)… this is a music, fashion and art blog so I wanted to do something quite arty but this is totally optional for you!

① Naturally I started with good old fashioned (can you really call it that if it’s for such modern technological blogging purposes… probably not.) paper and pencil. After I had sketched out some roses, you could literally choose any image you liked, I decided to fill them in with water colours. I think water colours create the pale/pastel/soft grunge feel. If you struggle with the sketching you can completely skip this step and find an image off the internet (check for copyright regulations) or take a photograph of your own or even just use the free photos and illustrations available on Canva (mentioned later, you can skip to step 5 ).

② As soon as the water colours have dried the next step is to either take a photo of it (USING A GOOD LIGHT SOURCE AND QUALITY CAMERA – iPhone/phone cameras are good as long as you have the right lighting) or scan it into your computer. Unfortunately I didn’t have access to a scanner but I feel that this was just as effective.

③ The next step is editing (the REALLY fun bit). I always found this concept really daunting but it’s so much easier than you think and you don’t even have to go out and pay for expensive software like Photoshop which I know isn’t ideal for people just starting out. Some great alternatives? I use the Pixlr editor but there are loads of others ones out there all you need to do is search! So I open the image in Pixlr (which is actually really easy to use) and the best way to get a really clean, fresh, simple background is to really bring out the white of the background, does it sound complicated? Yeah, I thought so too. All you need is the burn tool. I set the brush size to either 200 or 100 select the range to be on ‘highlights’ and the exposure to 100. Now, this is for the outside area of the image, you don’t want to get too close to, in my case the roses, as the burn tool will start to whiten out those too.

④ Once you’ve got a good cover over the majority of the background you now need to go in with the burn tool again but with different settings. You might want to play around but you want a much smaller brush size such as 30 or 50 and the brush that is slightly faded around the edges, you also want the exposure to be lower such as 70 or 80 but leave the range on highlights. This brush size will be much better for getting inbetween the lines without blurring out the details you’ve so elegantly hand drawn.

⑤ So, what now? Well once you save the image on your computer you need to go to Canva, this is also completely free and easy to use. You have to sign up and make an account etc but you will more than likely get a lot of use out of it. So you want to select ‘use custom dimensions’ and type in the dimensions of your blog (these can be found in the ‘Design’ section of Blogger on the adjust widths tab). As an example for my header I selected: 1200 x 360 px . Once your on Canva you can easily upload your image, or use the free ones available to you, and add text etc. This is obviously just right if you are creating a header as you can easily add the name of your blog and maybe a short description. The best thing to do is just play around with it and see what looks best. Another brilliant feature of Canva is that you can duplicate what you already have by pressing the 'copy image' button to the right of your design. So you can have the same size canvas, same images, same filter and then use different text and compare them side by side!

⑥ Time to upload! All you have to do is download the file as an image from Canva and then upload it to your blog, on Blogger this is done on the Layout page. If you struggled to follow this tutorial feel free to contact me jazbishbashbosh@gmail.com with enquiries/arrangements where I could create a header for you using my own artwork/graphics.

I’d love to see how yours turned out! Leave a comment down below with your blog or tag me in a picture on Twitter or Instagram!

JAZ BISHOP x

**DISCLAIMER** I am by no means a professional, this is just how I created my blog header in a fairly simple way and I thought I would share it with you! **DISCLAIMER**

DIY: Music Lyrics Photo Frame

Things you will need for this DIY are: An old picture frame (size of your choice), An image for the inside (it should be smaller than your frame), Acrylic paint and paint brushes(optional), Plain paper A3/A4/A5 (depending on the size of your frame), glue, Pencil for marking out and a pen of your choice (marker pen, fine liner). The reason this DIY includes a lot of optional things or things where you can choose yourself is because it will allow you to be more free and create a photo frame that will suite your room and be in your style! This might even be a good present for a friend or maybe even a Valentines gift where the central picture is of you and your loved one? It is very much down to you! So here we go…

First you will want to mark out (in pencil) on your plain paper where your frame overlaps so that your writing won’t be hidden and roughly mark out where your image will be. 

The next step will be optional. Now if your frame is not of your desired colour you can paint it. As mine is pink which doesn’t match my bedroom I’m going to paint it white instead. You can paint it however you like: in block colour, stripes, or patterns and with whatever colour you want. This is the second step so that your frame can be drying whilst you continue with the rest of the process. For my version I decided to add black splatters of paint around the frame simply by using watered down paint and flicking the paint brush, I did the same on the corners of the paper inside so that it had a more continuous effect.
TIP: If you have a dark coloured frame think carefully about your colours. I chose white for a pink frame but it took me quite a lot of layers of thick paint to cover the original pink, this is something you might want to consider.

FURTHER TIP: PLEASE be careful with your paint you may want to put newspaper or an old magazine down so that firstly you don’t get paint everywhere (like I managed to>.<) and secondly to prevent your frame sticking to your desk/ surface whilst drying (like mine did >.<).

On your plain paper that has been marked out you should start to write in, with the pen of your choice, lyrics from your favourite song(s). Obviously here it is completely optional which lyrics you choose and how you write them out.This step is optional but it is easier if you can glue your image to the paper as it will prevent it from sliding around in your frame however if you don’t have glue to hand, don’t worry just line it up as well as you can. On the other hand if you happen to have some blue tack take a small amount place it on the back of your image. Place all the pieces of your frame together and you’re done!

Your picture is now ready to be hung on the wall or wrapped as a gift! Here is my finished result. 

Let me know what you think and if you give this a go I’d love to see yours! You can tweet me @Bishhyyy , comment down below or tag me on Instagram @jazbishy . I hope this was helpful.

Jaz Bishop xxx