Custom Blog Re-Design - {Color of My Fangs}

Back in August, (yes, forever ago) Katie of "Color of My Fangs" (colorofmyfangs.blogspot.com) contacted Michelle and I asking for some help with the look of her blog. She was having trouble achieving the look she wanted and asked if we could figure it out.

I made my attempts at it but was having a hard time making the current template do what she wanted it to do. Instead of "fixing" the template, I thought it would be easier to start from scratch and just create a brand new template for her.

She didn't want much. Just a simple minimalist blog that highlighted her pictures more than anything else, with a horizontal drop down menu, that had a search function, and a social media icons menu. Like I said not much.

It was a challenge to have the two VERY different menus in the same widget. One was text and CSS based and the other was image based. At first I wasn't sure what I was going to do but then I found the solution. I had to modify the template and create a new two column section above the post area, separate from the single column section meant for the default blogger menu. Then make two separate widgets for the different menus. One on the left column and the other on the right. It took some trial and error but I was able to finally accomplish the look she wanted.

The other thing Katie wanted was to have her outfit images to be as large as possible. Unfortunately bloggers default sizes were not working for her. The original size was WAY to large and extra large was just a little too small. I ended up making some minor CSS adjustments to the images which made it possible for Katie to make them the perfect size for her needs.

Here is what the final look turned out to be. 

Katie was really great to work with and she was very understanding of my limited time. I think from start to finish it took about 2 months - I was able to get the finished blog to her in October. A little long, but not too bad considering all the other things I was doing those months (working part-time, my 5 year old started kindergarden, 2 of my sisters getting married, my anniversary, editing a movie - thats right I edited a movie, that will be in a few film festivals - it's called Jeb Finds God and you can watch it on Vimeo and not to mention that I had an infant attached to my hip) and the fact that it was all pro-bono. Not planning on doing that again. If you are interested in a blog design email us and we'll send you some info on our design process. 

Thanks for reading - What do you think of the design?