Blog Customisation

So after spending around 2 hours changing up my blog after writing my previous post, I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the websites I found with Blogger templates and things that I used on my blog! Plus it would be a good way to get back into blogging~

First I had decided I wanted simple and cute social media icons for the side of my blog. I'm not a graphic designer, and I didn't really want to be messing about for too long trying to create the icons I wanted, so I decided to Google-fu for some. Searching 'cute social media blog icons' or words to that effect brought up some nice icons, but many of the icon sets I found didn't include one for Youtube, which being a Youtuber, is something I had to have! However, I stumbled upon these icons, and found them to be perfect! Not only is there an icon for Youtube, but you can download them in many different colours so you can pick the set to match your blog, and there's also a blank icon in the set so you can make your own! I only used six of them on my blog, which you can see at the side, but they're my most important links on the internet, so it's nice to have them displayed in such a cute way~ I chose the bubblegum pink ones, if you're wondering.

As for the theme of my blog, Blogger's pre-set themes just weren't doing it for me. I like to be able to customise them, but none of them had the look I wanted for my blog, so it was back to Google for some more searching. Searching 'blogger theme', or 'template' brought up lots of results, but again, none of the themes were cute enough for my liking, or the style I was looking for. So obviously I began searching for 'cute blogger theme/template' and this brought a lot more results! I first came upon this blog post, it has a lot of links for templates and themes, and even background images and headers, all of which useful when customising your blog. Through that post I found this site, which has a lot of cute themes, and although I didn't use one of them for my blog, I will save the site for future reference.

I finally decided upon a theme from this site, and chose the subtle stripes theme. I really liked the background and scalloped border on this theme, and I even stuck with the original header rather than creating my own (although I will probably make one in the future) The download came with the XML file containing the HTML for the template, the font (although I ended up using CAC Pinafore) a blank header to customise and a Photoshop PSD file of the header for those owning Photoshop. It was very easy to add the text I wanted in PS, and I also saved a smaller version of the header with just the text for the signature at the end of my posts!

After that it was just a case of adding my pages and widgets down the side, including an Instagram widget from SnapWidget, and of course my cute little social media icons~! I really love how my blog looks now, so hopefully this will spur me on to blog more this year! I even transferred my frainy.com domain from my Tumblr over to this blog, so make it seem more official and perhaps force me to keep this updated? Either way, I hope you enjoyed this post and it was helpful! Let me know what you'd like me to write about next!