How to Add a Custom Blog Header

So I am pretty sure that I am not the only person on this planet who hates to pay for a service that you know good and well you could figure out how to do on your own with a little bit of "Googling". 

Now, here is where I am going to insert my disclaimer: I am by no means a computer genius [although sometimes I may consider myself to be a genius but it is never in the field of technology] with that being said you can go ahead and pretty much assume that I have found the easiest way to create a image blog header otherwise there would not be one up on my blog! 

This is pretty much how I feel about my computer at least once a million times a day!

I'm going to break this down into steps just to make it that much easier to follow:

Step 1: Download Pisaca 3 [it is free] and is what I used to create and edit my blog header. It is one of the more "navigator friendly" free photo editing programs. Plus, it is a Google program so it runs very well with Blogger. 

Step 2: Choose you're photos, I have made a blog header with one photo and also with four. The custom size ratio is not that different between the two. If you what to use just one picture as your header background then the size ratio will be 700 x 161, if you want to use four photos the ratio slightly changes to 600 x 161. For this post, let's assume your going to use four photos in your header image background. After you have chosen the photos, hold down the "Ctrl" and click on each photo to highlight them all at the same time. 

Step 3: While your four photos are still highlighted, go to the top and choose the option to "Create" then select "Picture Collage". You should now only just see the photos that you had selected on the screen. 

Step 4: On the left you will now see some setting options. Leave the defaulted "Picture Pile" it is the easiest one to work with. Go down to "Page Format" and in the drop down choose "Add Custom Ratio" a small box will appear and this is where  you will add either the 700 x 161 or the 600 x 161 depending on the photo count. Once you change the ratio you should notice that the photos will reconfigure on the screen. 

Step 5: Now that you have the correct size you can click on each photo to arrange them in the order you wish for them to lay, if you turn the mouse over the image if will straighten out the photo, also if you right click on a photo you can choose "Bring to Top" which is another way to rearrange the photos to lay the way you want them too. Try to arrange them where they completely fill up the size ratio that we selected.

Step 6: Once the photos are arranged to your liking then select on the left hand side under setting "Create Collage" this will now take you onto the editing portion where you can add text to your image.

Step 7: Under the edit option you should see a "Text" button. This will allow you to add your Blog title and any other text you want to appear on your header. You can choose your front, size, color and arrangement all from this edit option. Once you have completed you text you will select "Apply" under the left side edit menu to save the text to your image. 

Step 8: In order to add this to your blogger.com blog you need to first save the image as a png.file which it should automatically default to when you select the "Save As" function under the "File" drop down in the top left corner. 

Next, we need to add this masterpiece to you're Blog! It is super easy. here we go!

Step 1: Go to your Blogger Dashboard and select "design" to edit your Blog, once there choose the "Layout" option on the left hand side of the screen. Then in the middle of the screen you will see where your current blog title is listed, just to the right of that select the edit button. 

Step 2: Another window will open for the edit field. Select the "browse file" option and choose your saved Picasa header that you created, once you click on the save header it will automatically start to download the image.

Step 3: Now to select your placement, choose the option "Instead of title and description". Once you've selected that then hit save and it will upload your custom image header to your blog! It may take a minute or two to fully load and then save where you can preview it.

I hope this helps any other bloggers out there looking to customize they're blog without paying someone else to do it [although if you want to pay ME to do it for you...I totally will...just email me]! 

Next up on my list of  "things to learn to do myself with this blog"...figure out how to add those cute little gadget widget images on the left side of my posts. Yeah. This one might take me a while as it seems to be way more complicated then the header. But if I find an easier way I will definitely pass it along!