How to make a basic blog header when you really don't have a clue

Ok, so admittedly I didn't design my current blog header but for around 3 years I used to make mine using two easy peasy simple tools - Microsoft Paint and DaFont.  I completely taught myself this (although there really isn't anything to it) so it's not going to be the 'professional' way but if you're a new blogger or just fancy a new header but don't know how the hell to go about making one, this post is for you.

Step one: Find a font that you love on http://www.dafont.com. Pick about 5 or 10 so you can experiment with them as some don't look as great as you think they're going to then just click the download button to save them to your computer. You'll then need to click on the font and select 'install font' to install them onto your computer. For this post, I've picked Candy Cane Stripe and Honey Script.

Step two: Select Layout, then Template Designer from your blogger dashboard, click on adjust widths and make a note of the measurement of your blog. As you can see from the screenshot above, mine is 1090px.

Step three: Open paint and change the size of your picture to match your blog width. The height depends on how big you want your header to be and how much you actually want to include in it. I find anything between 150-300 pixels is just right.  BTW, I had to download Paint for MAC so mine will look different to yours if you're not using a MAC!

Step four: This is the fun bit! Play around with your header, experiment with different fonts and sizes and just have fun making something that's exactly you. Once you're happy with your header, save it but make sure you save it as a PNG file - i don't know what a PNG file is but I know that if you save it as this, it'll look exactly as it does on paint. If you save as a JPEG, it goes all blurry and the colour goes a bit off!

Step five: INSTALL YOUR BLOG HEADER! Go to your blogger dashboard, click on layout and then select 'edit' on the header tab. You then just need to upload your image, make sure the 'instead of title and description' box is ticked and click save. Then preview your new and improved blog header!

So that's how you can make your blog look prettier in about 20 minutes. It's literally so simple and if I can do it, you definitely can too! I hope this little five step tutorial was helpful and let me know if you decide to create your own blog header on the back of this post as I'd love to see it.

I'm thinking about writing another post about other quick, simple ways to improve your blog look so let me know if you'd like that :)