Live, Laugh, and be Mary

Designing a blog for my good friend Mary was a bit intimidating at first because she is graphic designer herself.  But she assured me that she was excited to have me do it for her. Mary's directions to me were to use lots of purple jewel tones and maybe 'put a bird on it'. No, she didn't really say that, but the Bloggess did and Mary & I both are still laughing over it.

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Back to the blog design. I've been learning a lot of new things through a workshop I'm taking at The Blog Designer Network. Most importantly, I'm totally changing the way I design blogs from the ground up. From now on, I will work on the whole design in Photoshop as one large canvas so I can see how the different elements will work together. Here is Mary's layout, as an example.

What is really cool, is that I'm learning how to write the code myself, instead of just copying and pasting bits of what other people have posted on various tutorials. For example, I coded the ribbon side bar banners as background images so the next time Mary wants to add a sidebar widget, the banner will automatically show up in the background!

This is what the finished product ended up looking like. Another cool thing is that the birdcage is actually part of the background image, so it stays in place as visitors scroll through the site.

Thank you, Mary, for trusting me with your blog design. It was so fun to take your ideas and turn them into something we both love.