How to Make Your Own Blog Button

Hello everybody! There was a request recently for me to do a tutorial on blog design. At first I was super overwhelmed, cause I'm obviously not a professional. I don't even know if I design my blog in the right way.. I kind of just play around with some stuff and see how it works out, basically a trial and error process.Then I thought about how much I have learned about blog design in these past couple of months and I gained a whole lot of confidence. I look back at when I very first started my blog and compared to now I didn't know anything. I remember setting up my blog and feeling so incredibly lost, not even knowing how to change the font of the Title. So I'm going to take a giant step here and try to tell you how I design a blog button. It was the first request, so I'm going to start off with that. Making a blog button really isn't too hard, I mean obviously, cause I can do it. Haha.

The first thing you need to do is install GIMP. This is the software I use to do all of my blog design. Basically, it's like photoshop but free! I know that it's scary to download stuff to your computer but I promise this is safe. I downloaded it on my brand new laptop which I am so paranoid about. I researched and researched this and everything I read said it was safe. That's all I can say, but I'm not accountable for a virus on your computer! You can go to this site to get that installed. Gimp is heavenly. There are so many possibilites as to what you can make, it's great!

Moving right along! Open up Gimp. At the top you should see a File menu at the top. Scroll down and click New. Once you do that a menu should pop up asking about all kinds of sizes. Delete the 640 and 400 and type 150 in each box. This is the size of a blog button that will fit in the average sidebar. Feel free to make it whatever size you want, but this is the most avearge. Now I'm gonna get all fancy and include a picture for your benefit!

Okay so a little box will pop up, and this is kind of like your canvas. Here's where your own design will come into play! My best advice to you would be to keep it short and sweet and simple. It looks more sleek, I think. For my buttons I usually go and download some free digital scrapbook embellishments from ShabbyPrincess or any other places that have cute little things. To put these cute little things on your blog button you will need to go to the same File menu as before and click on create new layer.From here you should be taken to a menu where you'll pick your embellishment that you've saved to your computer. Click on it. Most likely your embellishment will be huge, so you'll need to resize it. At the top, click on Layer, then scroll to scale layer and enter in a reasonable size. You can adjust it later in case it's not right the first time.You'll need to do this with every embellishment you add to your button.You can also change the background color by clicking one of the black or white boxes just below the list of tools. Also, take notice of the tools, which is the far left box. The most important ones are the Text Tool and the Move Tool. You can scroll over each of the tools and it will tell you what it is and what it's function is. Just keep messing around with things and you'll get the hang of it!

So. You've made your absolutely beautiful blog button and you now have no idea what to do. Let me help. First, you will need to save your button to your computer. After that, go to an image hosting website of your choice such as PhotoBucket or TinyPic. Upload your button to the website. Keep that up, and don't exit out of it! Next you will go to your blogger dashboard and click on Desgin, after that click on Add a Gadget. Select HTML/Javascript and copy the following code.

<img src=”http://YOURBUTTONLOCATION.jpg” />

<br ?> <text area style=”text-align:center”

Rows=”4” cols=”22”><a border=”0”

Href=”http://YOURBLOGADDRESS.com”

Target=”_blank”><img

Src=http://YOURBUTTONLOCATION.jpg></a></textarea>

After that code is copied, go back to your image hosting site. Find your button in your album and click on share. You're going to copy the direct link of your image.

So copy that, then go back to the code you copied earlier. Replace the words YOURBUTTONLOCATION with the direct link you just copied. Then replace the words YOURBLOGADDRESS with... well, your blog address. (: I'm so sorry if that was all confusing but I tried, I really did! I hope this helped you! Leave me a link to your blog in the comment section, I'd love to look at it!

Just Trust Me..