In preparation for the Paint Shop Pro/Blogger tutorials, I have chosen a digital scrapbooking kit from Digi Web Studio.
This kit is perfect because it contains everything you need to make a banner, blog background, buttons, and it doesn’t require a commercial license!
I decided to post the link to the kit now in case you would like to use the same kit I’m going to use throughout all of the tutorials. The best news, it is currently on sale for $.99. What a bargain! The sale ends this Friday, June 5, so if you’d like to pick it up do so before then.
You do not need to purchase this kit. You can use whatever images or digital scrapbook items you want, just be sure to read the usage information that comes with each image/kit. Some designers do not allow their images to be used on blogs or websites, so please be sure to follow their guidelines. I’ll be posting a list of sites where you can find images in the next week or two.
As far as the banner and web buttons go, you will also need some sort of design software. There are plenty of choices: Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Corel Draw, and many more. Photoshop is the absolute best, but is also the most expensive at $650+. I wish I could afford to use it, but that is just not in my budget. So, I use Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. It costs under $100 and works really well. I’ve had it for almost a year and still have so much to learn about it, but it is fairly easy to use (once you get the hang of it) and works for my design needs.
I’ll be posting my first tutorial sometime next week, and will begin with setting up your Blogger template. If you are interested in the header and button tutorials only, they probably won’t be covered for a couple of weeks. You’ll have plenty of time to pull together your design software, images, and digital scrapbook items.