My free blog template expired...so I had to go (free) shopping for a new look. Unfortunately, the free templates out there didn't grab my attention, so I went with a free background + banner. I am pleased!! It was quite a headache, but now I feel like a pro after changing several things until it looked just right.
Here are some of the tricks I learned...
I found my freebies here. They have a ton of great stuff!
Their instructions are pretty simple, but I kept ignoring the part about setting your blogger template to "Simple." That is key! The background didn't show up until I changed the template.
The banner (our title) opens as an image, so I just pasted it into Word and added text boxes to add the title. I had to do this several times to increase the size and length until it fit just right in the blog. To place it in the blog template, I used the free software Snipping Tool (already installed on Windows 8) to screen capture the image with the words, and saved that image as a jpeg. Then I just uploaded that image "instead of title" for our blog!
The "Simple" template doesn't allow for you to change the text font, size or color. You have to go through the html settings, which I will eventually do using this tutorial. I took two computer programming courses in college, but yikes. I forgot everything, we didn't learn anything like this, and it definitely looks like a foreign language.
I also customized the template to increase the width of the posts. I really like to place pictures next to each other, and the original settings aren't wide enough.
Bonus: The instagram feed is a free widget that you can get here.
Let me know if you need help!
I was just about to text you to ask how you did the banner at the top. I may need a step by step tutorial on that one. Mine looks lame :)
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