Creating Navigation Tabs

Beautify your Blog

The next lesson on Erin's Beautify your Blog series is 5. Navigation Tabs. I've been thinking for a while about adding more pages to my blogs. Of course, it's important that the tabs link to related and interesting pages. To that end, I've been noticing what types of additional pages bloggers have on their sites. Here are some of the additional pages that are often found on quilting blogs:

• Quilting Tips or Tutorials;
• Link to their e-Shop, patterns for sale, etc.;
• Linking Parties (that they created or participated in); 
• Quilts and Projects (either in-process or finished);
• Quilt-Alongs (that they created or participated in);
• Speaking,Teaching and Events (especially if they are professionals);
• About Me;
• Quilt Gallery or Finished Projects (photos of finished quilts) (some divided by year); and
• Helpful Hints (theirs or links to other resources).

Here are some neat ideas about other possible pages:

• UFO Management; 
• Events that they are attending;
• Annual Plans (usually UFOs and UFO Challenges);
• Quilt Journal (links to all of the blogs related to a finished quilt);
• Ideas for future quilts (lists, links, pictures, sketches, etc.);
• Interesting Resources (on the internet, books, etc.) about design, FMQ; 
• Quilting Bloggers around the world;
• Specific interest pages such as techniques, products like journal covers or purses, original designs, etc.; and
• Specific Projects or a series, etc. (that they created or participated in).

I've been doing some research on the design blogs out there. Many are created by professional designers who have companies, so it's difficult to use them as examples of the types of pages I might want to add to my design blog. I guess the real issue is what is the purpose of the blog. For me, it's about recording my learning journey in design, be it for web, blog, e-learning or anything else. As I keep looking at design blogs, I'll be able to get a better sense of what I will want for the Design blog. I'm slowly making my way though the Top 100 Design Blogs To Follow by Ciera Design.

Technically you don't want to create and publish navigation tabs if they don't link to anything....that's why I started this process in the test site. I'll be creating potential navigation tabs and showing them off in this post, but will only upload them on my "real" site as I create actual pages to link to.

Erin suggested that when creating navigation tabs, that the image for the navigation tab should be about 50px high or less.  I did create a button using the image above but when I went to post it on Photobucket, it didn't let me download just one photo, but rather, it downloaded my entire folder. I was not impressed. It may have been my fault, but after that, I wasn't in the mood to keep at it. Maybe one day when I have more patience, I'll try again.

So, I did what everyone does....I Googled it! I found a web site that said that I can use a gadget for my navigation bar. That sounded good to me. When I searched the gadgets, it wasn't really obvious, but here it is. It worked really well and was fairly easy to install. Now, I just have to figure out what I want to place in my navigation bar.

What I learned:

• It's not a good idea to play with new apps when I'm impatient! On the other hand, it did lead me to find an alternative to creating my own navigation tab. 
• I know that I at least want to link my two blogs together. I'll be able to do this and still keep their design distinct.
• I don't really need an "about me" section, but like Erin said, it is easy to create.

Working on a Header

Weeks 3 and 4 of Beautify your Blog is about the header. I'm looking forward to these because so far I'm not really impressed with the backgrounds that I've chosen. I know that once I create a header that I like, that I will probably have to use a more neutral background.

Here are a few things that Erin suggests:

• If you've adjusted the width of your blog, then you'll want a header that is roughly 1000px wide. The height of the header should be about a third of the width, so in this case, 300px or so.
• Use only a couple of fonts and match your background colours.

I ended up making a large number of headers. I love making these. I've been using PowerPoint to make my own images for years. It's simple to put images together and then add text. One thing that I've learned is that it's best to do this within a coloured box, even if that colour is white. Unless I'm going to use just one background image, the first thing I do is create a white rectangle with a thin border. I then add my images and text boxes. Once I'm done, I save the entire group as a JPEG image. After the image is saved, it's easy to place it where you need it, and then, if you don't like something, to go back into PowerPoint to make changes. That's why I always save my PowerPoint file - you never know when you'll have to go back and make changes.

Here are some of the headers I've tried out on the Test site.

Header with two large images and centered name

In my header I've used a number of images. This example contains two larger images, one of them within a round frame. The blog name is large and in the middle, and as Erin suggested, it contains two fonts and two colours that fit with the background.

Header with round images and smaller name

In this example, I used a number of images within round frames. The blog name is smaller and located under the smaller images.

Header with images in square frames

This header is similar to the above example but the images are within a square frame with rounded borders. There are less of them and they are slightly larger.

You will notice that the background is different. I tried taking a picture of fabric and using these as background. This was my favourite one, but I'm not sure that it's required if I have an interesting header.

Header for Learning & Design Blog

I wanted to try something totally different for my Learning & Design blog. (You may have noticed that the other images are for the Quilting & Learning blog.)

Header with different fonts

This is a similar header with  different fonts and a different background colour. I found the design, Stitches, on the Starsunflower Studio site that Erin suggested. The design is by Jan Kopriva.

Header with an overall image

I've just added a different header for the Learning & Design blog. It took a while to get it right because it turns out that even if you make the background the correct size (970px), when you open it up in PowerPoint, the size will change.

The image is Winter Leaves, designed by Nathalie Ouederni from France. I found the image on the Smashing Magazine website, as part of their Desktop Wallpaper Calenders: January 2015 series. Isn't it great? If you go to Nathalie's site, you can download wallpaper from this image.

What I learned:

• If you want to put writing within your image, you have to have a uniform section to write in, otherwise you'll only see the writing in some sections and not others.
• Details such as font, font size and the frames around images can make a lot of difference.
• Bringing an image into PowerPoint changes its size!
• Working with a width of over 1000px makes aligning images much more difficult within a post. I ended up going back to 970px.
• Getting the same colour background for my test site and this site was very difficult. It turns out that if you want to change the background colour to something specific, you should go to the "Advanced" setting/ "Backgrounds" and then change the "Outer Background".
• The hard part is choosing! Should I keep making new headings or just choose one?  

If you have any preferences, please let me know!

New Look is Coming Along

It's week 2 of Beautify your Blog. Erin's examples and instructions are really well done. The lesson was on Blog Layouts and Backgrounds.

New background

Erin gave us suggestions for finding wallpaper through Google. It turns out that getting the right wallpaper is tricky. They suggest that if you want to image to cover the full background of the blog, then the image should be 1800 x 1600 or greater. However, the image needs to be under 300k - that's quite small. So if you want a large image, the resolution has to be pretty low; and then you would only see the sides of the wallpaper behind your blog.

Another option is to find a smaller image and tile it. This can work very well, but it really depends on the image. I found a funky but not too strong image at Wallpaper Panda.com It's relatively small; tiles well; has colour and interest without over-powering the page.

Following Erin's instructions, I also made the test blog wider. I think it's important to show more of the blog and less of the background!

First version of the new look

Although Erin suggests keeping the blog's background (where the writing is located) white, I just found the contrast to be too much. I played with many colours and the one I liked best was the cream. I actually loved the pale pink, but that didn't give the page enough contrast.

I'm not sure is this is my final background design but I'm going with this choice at this time. The great thing about the design is that it can be changed, and it's even easier than painting a room!

Second background choice

I guess I must of had reservations about my choice because after publishing this blog post and making the changes in the Learning & Design blog, I got an idea (oh oh!) When I took the picture of the blog above, it was with the Snipping Tool and I notices when I posted it that it was quite small in size.....so, why not take a snippet of one of the backgrounds that I liked but was too large, and see if this would work. Well, it did!

Second option for the new look

Now I have a dilemma - which image should I use? I'm going to post images of both images and blogs. I don't have to decide right away - and if you want to tell me which one you like best, that would be appreciated!

The next two lessons are about creating a header - I can't wait. It would be nice to create something that pops!


What I learned:

• I loved playing with the background! I seem to be unable to choose anything that is really sedate.
• Sometimes it's good to consider other tools such as the Snipping Tool to play with your images.
• I also learned how to add a text gadget at the bottom of the blog to give credit for the image.

Beautifying My Blog Project

Welcome back!

I've been reading many blogs lately (usually of a quilty nature of course!) and came upon Sew at Home Mummy's Beautify your Blog series. There are twelve posts in the series which started a while ago so that her series is now finished. That's how I love series...finished! Now I won't have to wait to go from one post to the next.

The series was created by Erin Davis, an incredibly busy Sew at home mummy who tries to blog at least 3 times a week (that's my objective for the month!!) The series was created specifically for those using blogger.com. I'm going to follow the series and post my results in this blog as I go along.

Are you ready for a design adventure? I'll take that as a yes if you're still reading :-)

Week one Start Here:
There are a series of videos on how to get ready for this Adventure.

Video 1 is "How to back up your blog".  Well, since I really don't like my blog's template, I'm going to take a chance and not back it up. I'm sure that all will go well. Once I've changed my blog to something I love, I'll back it up!

Video 2 is "How to make a test blog". That's probably a good idea. I have created the test blog and will copy the positive results on this blog. I can also use my favourite Snipping Tool to take pictures of the not so positive results or anything else that will help you and I learn to beautify our blog.

Learning & Design Blog - Before

I've taken a shot of my Learning & Design: What a Combo! blog as it looks before taking this course. My objective is to beautify it!

Video 3 is about inserting a button within the post and on the side of the blog. Although I had figured out a while ago how to insert a button, I did learn something I had been wondering about.... and it's so simple!

I'm not sure if you can see it in the "before" photo, but the title over the button on the right is "Beautify Your Blog Series", which is redundant since that's what the button says! I was wondering how bloggers got comments like "Participating in..." within their side bar. It turns out that they write that comment as the title! You can also include more than one button in the same gadget. 


As for inserting a button in the post, if you don't want to work in html, you can click the button in the options section to "Interpret typed HTML". This means that you can paste the button information directly on your post page and it will interpret the html code for you. This is how I posted this button. I also followed her instructions for changing the alignment of the button from center to left of the page.

I can't wait to play with my template. So far I've only changed it to Simple. Stay tuned for more changes.








What I learned:

• Although I often work with html coding at work, I didn't really make the link to using it for things like the gadgets that are inserted on the blog page. It turns out that they follow the same principle as web pages. I didn't have the code to insert the Grandmother's Choice button but I followed the code pattern of the Beautify Your Blog button and Voila! Isn't it amazing when you can apply things that you know from one domain to another? Now that's real learning.