New Look, Craft it Forward, & Favorite Color Swap

First, did you guys notice the new look around here?  It just happened yesterday, but I'm SO happy with it.  It finally has a warmer feeling and it has the watercolor effect I wanted.  Love.

Craft It Forward

Second, I want to do a Craft it Forward.  I recently was able to claim a spot from Amanda over at Little Lady Little City, so I'm going to pass it along.  The first five people to comment on this post with their email, favorite color(s), and a little bit about themselves get something handmade from me!

Favorite Color Swap

I was partnered up with the adorable Tiffanie from Life with the Little Man.  She was such a sweet girl, look at what she sent me:

Now I'm going to work on some crafts before hitting a party and the club tonight! 

What are you up to today?

Recent Blog Design

Today I wanted to share with you a few blog designs I've done in the last few months.  

Ricki Jill hired me to do the design for Art @ Home as her family's Mother's Day gift to her, and I was so excited to be able to put together a theme that I thought would fit her.  Since she's a painter I wanted to go with some paint designs and some of her favorite colors-and the result not only ended up being really creative and brightly colored-but it was near and dear to her (awesome coincidence since I didn't tell her what I was doing) since she gets teased often about how messy of an artist she is! See the full design HERE!

Cerise from Craft Cherry won her design in one of my giveaways, and I had so much fun making her little cherries (stitches and all since she's a crafter) from scratch.  I loved the color scheme she chose, and it was really great to be able to put some of those colors into action throughout the rest of her design!  Some of the most fun I had was with her topics-I wanted her readers to easily find the different crafts! See the full design HERE!

Kayla also won her design for Green Mountain Couple in one of my giveaways.  Since her and Dan are big on the outdoors I wanted to stick with their "green mountain" theme and literally made them a green mountain from scratch and matched it with their already existing logo.  We also thought it would be fun to do the Social Media icons as little state shapes, since they're really proud of where they come from!  See the full design HERE!

Don't forget that if you'd like some help sprucing up your blog, you can use code SUMMERLOVE to take 20% off any blog design order in my shop until Sept.! 

New Blogger Series: Blog Design Tips

You may or may not have realized this by now, but your blog design definitely impacts your readership.  If your blog is hard to read, too cluttered/messy, or genuinely painful on the eyes people wont continue following and/or visiting.  You may keep a few dedicated friends/bloggy bffs visiting out of sheer love for you, but if you want to increase your readership and build a larger and wider circle of readers, you have to be aesthetically pleasing.

I know they say "you can't judge a book by it's cover" but I'll be the first to admit that I do judge blogs by their design.  It doesn't mean I wont keep following you (because goodness knows I probably love your face) but I can usually tell the blogs level of professionalism within the first few minutes.  Advertisers/sponsors and other readers can too.

The colors you choose are going to make a big difference in what your design looks like.  Make sure you pick a color theme and stick to it as best you can throughout you're whole design.  A color scheme really can have as many colors as you like in it, as long as they look good together and seem to have some kind of order to them.  Usually I would recommend picking 2-3 colors and going with that-as it's a really clean look, but if you want more colors-go for it!  Just stick with colors that go well-such as all pastels, all bright colors, all dark colors, etc.

Also, when choosing the background and basic post font colors, make sure to make it easy to read.  Dark colored words on a white background, or light colored words on a dark background.  If it's not easy to read people generally wont read it...

When I was helping Carrie of The Carrie Gland with her design, she came well prepared.  She used a website called Color Scheme Designer to pick four colors she kind of liked together, and then as we worked through it she ended up choosing the Purple from her original choice, with black and gray as her scheme.  The great thing about that site is it will help you choose colors and shades that go better together than others, and it's a resource I'm going to be using more often.

When choosing a basic font for things such as typing and titles, it's best to go with something basic.  The curly or cursive fonts look cute, yes, but are also harder to read and less professional looking.  If you like it and don't care-go for it (I'm not here to judge) just understand that some people may have a hard time reading and thus may not come back as often.

When choosing fonts for your design, you should generally choose three.  One cursive/fancy font, one bold font, and one basic font.  Personally I used a cursive and bold font for my header, then the basic font for my info graphic.  I also then used the same cursive font for my gadget headers (and these topic images above!)  Just make sure your fonts look good together, and go with your color scheme.  This doesn't always apply, sometimes you find different combinations that work great-it's just a general suggestion for getting started.

You can find a lot of fonts for free places like dafont.com (which I use), just make sure to read the terms some of the fonts include, as some may allow you to use it for everything, and some may only allow you to use it for personal use and require a license for profit use.

Your blog header should introduce your blog and show new readers a little of what to expect from you and your personality.  The blog header should also fit within your chosen color scheme and font. Make it stand out-and make it represent you!  It can be simple and elegant or unique and witty, it can be just words or include a graphic that expresses exactly what your blog is about!   You'll also see that most of those blogs also have buttons that either match their header, or go along with the theme well! Buttons are great for people to show their love for you-or you can use them for your ad spots.I find examples show you better than me trying to explain it:

Blog design can be hard to pull off if you're not skilled with web design tools and creating graphics, in which case there are tons of blog designers out there!  It just depends on what kind of look you're going for-and how much you want to spend.  The more you spend the more you're going to get, but you can also go simple and keep it cheaper-but still have a really good look. 

For example, Dana from The Wonder Forest does AMAZING blog design in her shop Envye.  She can do just about any type of coding for just about any service-but since she's so good and well sought after her prices are a bit higher (though well worth it if you can afford it! Seriously awesome.).  

I also do blog design, but mine is less expensive because there's a lot of her skill that I don't have yet, but I can do some really great simple and inexpensive designs for those on a lower budget.  :) You can check out some examples of my work by thumbing through my Designs, and you can order work from me through my Etsy store: 

Whomever you choose, you should always look through their designs and prices to find out what fits you best.  There are a few other blog designers I love, and if you want to check them out they are:

Here are some great DIY Design Resources and Tutorials to help you do your own blog design should you not want to hire a designer.

Tutorials:

• How to Center Post Titles, Gadgets, and Dates in Blogger.
• How to create Image Maps (multiple links in one image)
• How to make Headers & Navbars using PicMonkey
• Create Your Own Social Media Icons
• The Blogger's HTML Cheat Sheet

Free Stuff:

• The Cutest Blog on the Block  (Backgrounds)
• A Large List of Free Stuff from B.You Blog
• 40 Free Social Media Icons for Bloggers

Lesson 1: Blogger Lingo

Lesson 2: Finding Your Niche

Lesson 3: Social Media

Lesson 4: Start a Conversation

Lesson 5: Blog Design Tips

Lesson 6: Blog Sponsorship

Lesson 7: Accepting Sponsors

Lesson 8: Running a Giveaway

Lesson 9: Hosting Linky Parties
Lesson 10: Back Up Your Blog

The One Stop Design Shop

I am pleased to announce that I have divided my shops.  I have moved my main shop with all of my actual product in it over to Storenvy, and it can now be found at shop.mysocalledchaos.com, though it doesn't have a lot of product in it at the moment.

I didn't want to kill my Etsy shop either, because I love that community, so I decided that Etsy would be for my design work, and so I introduce you to the My So-Called Chaos One Stop Design Shop!  I'm hoping it'll take off, I've been doing a lot of blog design work for both friends and customers lately!

 

Here's a peak at what I've been up to with my blog design lately:

Stacie from Park Avenue came to me because Photobucket ate her blog.  All of her images were giving her an over-share message and the blog designer was no where to be found!  So I came to the rescue and put togehter something wonderful for her (I love it!  The contrast with the red and black is so fun!)  Custom background, custom social media, gadget headers, blog header, buttons, blog intro, everything. See it live and in action HERE and read the post she wrote about working with me HERE.

Just before that Bethany of Stella Kenton Body Shop (whom most of us know and love!) came to me wanting an update for her blog Happily Rambling.  She told me she was basically a dirty hippie (only not the gross dirty kind) who tried to stay as positive as possible.  I immediately wanted a sunshiney garden look for her blog-so I threw this together and even made little matching flower social media icons!  See it live HERE and see what she had to write about me HERE.

My friend Julie told me she wanted to start a food blog, so I surprised her by throwing together a cute little blog dedicated to her love of food.  See the live version HERE.

When Kristina saw Julie starting a food blog, she immediately told me how much she wanted to have a good food/recipe blog where she could talk about her love of cooking.  I immediately set to work to give her a good place to do that.  See the live version HERE.

I also updated her regular personal blog.  My goal was to make it look like a crime scene, and I feel like I totally nailed it.  See the live version HERE.

I also did a cute design for Myya at Myya Says a little while ago too.  She picked a background she loved from The Cutest Blog on the Block and I made a header, buttons, social media, and blog intro graphic to match!  See it live HERE and see what she had to say about me HERE.

I also have this extemely loyal customer Tiffany from Make it Mine Couture who always comes to me for a new design.  She always wants a new Etsy banner, and Facebook banner.  I love all of the cute and creative things she's had me come up with for her and the changing seasons/holidays.  Visit her shop HERE and her Facebook HERE.

These are from a while back, but I never shared just how cute this little lamb is that I made for WakaWakaWool.  Totally custom, and I totally made him digitally from scratch.  Love.  Seriusly, isn't he just the cutest little thing?  I love when I get to be creative and make my own little logos.

Examples of My Blog Design

Interested in having me help you with some design?
Contact me and we can figure something out!