Blog Design Series Lesson #6

Welcome to the final blog design series, Lesson #6. Today we will add a few navigation buttons to our blog. Again, let’s open up Paint…

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Welcome to the final blog design series, Lesson #6. Today we will add a few navigation buttons to our blog.

Again, let’s open up Paint Shop Pro. Just as we did with our header in Lesson #5, let’s open up a new image but with the dimensions of 125 width and 50 height pixels.

We need to add a background first, so I am going to make mine the same color as my blog outer-wrapper. Forget where the outer-wrapper color is located? Check how we changed the colors in Lesson #2.

To make your background a specific HTML color code, find Materials on the top right hand corner of Paint Shop Pro. Double click on the first square. A box should pop up with the HMTL color code at the bottom. Replace the color in the box with the color you want your background to be. Click OK.

Do the same for the second box, making both boxes the same HTML color.

To color the background we need to use the flood fill tool. It looks like a paint can and is located on the left toolbar towards the bottom.

Choose the tool, drag the paint can arrow to the white box, and click once. Now the background should be your HTML color.

Let’s put a background now for the text. I’ve chosen a piece of notebook paper.

Forget how to add clip art and digital scrapbook images? Follow the instructions for making a header in Lesson #5.

Now I think we need a button on the side. I’ve added a plaid button to the left side of the navigation button.

Now for the text. For starters, let’s just make a Home button. Once the text font and color is decided save it as a jpeg file to your desktop and then upload it to Photobucket.


We are now ready to put the button on our blog. Feel free to make as many buttons as you’d like. It looks better with five or six than one or two. Tips for New Bloggers has a great tutorial on setting up a horizontal navigation bar. This is the tutorial I used. You can view all of the steps, here.


So how does your blog look? I hope you have enjoyed my Blog Design Series. I’ve had a lot of fun explaining my (little) knowledge of blog design. Missed a lesson? You can find them all, here.

Now, next time you want to update the look of your blog it won’t seem as overwhelming. It really is fun and satisfying to see all of your hard work pay off. Enjoy your new blog!