So for those of you who noticed I recently found this artist online that I thought was absolutely breath-taking! I fought with myself over what picture, and how I should crop it so that I may use it for my banner. I hope they don’t get mad at me! I found the art here and I just wanted to show it to you all!! Here are a couple of my favorites:

This is the one that I love most, I found it breath-taking and had to choose where to crop for my banner

The actual artist’s BIO is here if you are interested in more. I wish I was not a poor student, because if I were rich all my money would go to buying paintings like this.

I think this is a DS106 Assignment “revamp your banner” I have Roundhouses here I just found inages that I liked and I set them as my banner, as you can see I have six new images! This is a WEB assignment, I think its my first WEB assignment. I was just intending to share some art, but lo-and behold I could use it for a DS106. I actually saw one of theese pictures on a friends Facebook page and wanted it for myself. I did use someone elses art, but I did create a new banner

The Assignment

The assignment was to Revamp Your WordPress Banner. This is as simple as it sounds:

If your WordPress blog has a banner, replace it with one that you’ve made yourself instead of using a preset image from a theme.

I actually submitted it, and in hindsight wish I named it more creatively… Like “Banner Make-Over” or something.

The Process

I decided that I wanted something a little more engaging and less bleak than my default banner “Misty”. While it reminds me of the charming San D’Orian leveling zones from Final Fantasy XI, it just made my page far too pale.

I first decided to browse the Flickr Creative Commons offerings. Just randomly browsing recent additions was getting me nowhere, so I quickly had to narrow down my search. I just got an invite to Pintrest today and have been using it to bookmark no-bake sweets for Valentines Day inspiration, so that influenced my decision. I decided to search for “cupcakes.” I had to filter through a lot of really bad photos and not-good looking cupcakes, but then I finally found one that was both delicious looking and charming:

The original link to this image is here and it belongs to Flickr user Lamantin.

For those of you who don’t browse food pictures often, this type of shot is basically the MySpace angle of sweets. It’s all in the slight tilt.

Next I had to crop the image to the correct banner size of 760×190 pixels. I’m guessing this is standard on WordPress. I just opened up Pixlr with the cupcake image and then created a “New” image and specified the correct dimensions. If you have an image that meets these measurements WordPress will use it as is. If it’s larger I’m assuming it’ll get re-sized.

Cropping the image to the appropriate banner size in Pixlr.

Following this I saved the image. I decided against adding any text directly to the image, since I can already do that above the header image through Word Press. Also at the time I didn’t feel “roundhouseslap” really fit the mood of the picture.

Here's the cropped banner.

Deciding that it would be really lazy to stop there, I decided to run it through the vintage effects editor that Pixlr had which I found when I did my original Engelbart ds106 assignment.

Adding vintage-y filters, overlays, and borders through Pixlr.

The vintage Pixlr editor is like Photoshop for hipsters, and I like it. I wanted to make the colors pop, something that added brightness and saturation… Something different from “misty.”

This is what I finally came out with.

I decided to rename my blog to “Roundhouseslap’s Cupcakery” just to fit the theme. I also ended up updating some font colors and the page’s background as well. I’m rather pleased with the end result. It’s nothing complicated, but it makes me content to look at it. I also credited the original owner of the image in my header text, since it would be showing up on every page of my blog.

The Story

I wanted to do something from the web category for a ds106 since I hadn’t touched that section yet. I saw the Revamp Your WordPress Site assignment and took an interest, but WordPress (free and without owning a domain) seemed resistant to using a 3rd party layout. That said, I also rather liked my current layout. I just thought it needed some personal touches. So I went ahead and submitted an assignment for making your own header. I think the header image is a very strong and important part of your blog. It’s said that a picture is worth 1000 words. Keeping that in  mind, that means your blog’s header image tells people what your blog is about and who you are, before they ever read anything. It’s like your first paragraph, but in non-paragraph form.

With that submitted I decided to get started right away on finding images. Cupcakes seem kind of counter-intuitive (well, at least if you know me well). I actually adhere to the primal/paleo diet, which I’ve mentioned in previous posts, which generally means gluten-free, dairy-free, an avoidance of added sugars, etc. Basically, when all is said and done, cupcakes are the ultimate evil in a primal diet. Still, I absolutely love sweets, baking, decorating, and cupcakes. I especially love browsing really pretty blogs about them.

While my blog is most definitely not about cupcakes, at least this layout allows me to pretend. It’s kind of hard to bake when you don’t own an oven (<3 Tokyo).