Creating A Free Blog Banner With Picnik

Today in our Blogging Series we are going to take a look at banners. 

I have seen some absolutely beautiful banners in Blog Land. I'm not nearly as creative as many of you, but I will walk you through how I do it. If you see a banner on a blog that you just love, email and ask how they achieved the effects you desire. I've done this plenty of times!

There are lots of free photo editing programs. Pat told you about some last week. Lately I prefer to use Picnik to make my banners, because you can move your photos around in the collage until you're pleased with the looks of it. 

Go to the Picnik site. On the Home page, click Collage.

My banner has four photos from my home in the collage. But for learning purposes, I will make another.

Below is where you choose the size. If you want something other than what is offered for free, you will have to purchase the Premium Picnik. I have never felt the need for that.

You can upload five photos for the project you're working on. Find them wherever you keep your pics and upload them to Picnik.

Below are the ones I chose from my files for this tutorial. If you don't like your placement, simply drag and drop to the spot you want the photo until it is pleasing to the eye.

The default separator line between photos is black. I am going to move my cursor over the colors and choose white to separate my photos.

See, now it's white.

You can adjust the spacing of the separator color choice here. I have narrowed mine some.

Yes, I think I like the narrowed separator line better for this collage.

Next I'm going to choose a frame to outline my collage/mosaic.

You can adjust the size and thickness of your frame with these tools.

Next we're going to choose a font for our blog title. Once you click Text, this empty box will pop up.

Remember to click the Add button when you've made choices, such as for a frame or text.

Once the text for your title is added to your collage, you can move it about to get it placed where you want it. You can tug at the corners and move it up or down. And you can also make it bigger or smaller.

Use the little toggle tools to move it about your collage.

Here is where you can change the size of your banner. When you have it the size you prefer, remember to Save it. I saved mine as Brendas collage. (My banner actually is 880 pixels by 224 pixels.)

I'm going to say something here about banner sizes. I find that the bigger the banner, the slower it is to load to my browser. Same with photos. 

I read recently that some prefer to be able to see some of a post when they click on your blog. So I made mine smaller. 

If you want to check how long it takes your blog to load, go to Stopwatch and find out.

I often switch from Picnik to Photoscape to add a frame, because Photoscape has a wider choice of frames for free.

Additionally, I did not overlay my blog title on my collage/mosaic. I chose to use a Blogger Template Design and have my blog title be in a separate box. Since I spoke of my banner last, I have figured out how to center my blog title within the allotted space. There is some coding involved.

There are endless ways to create eye-catching banners. And so many tips and things I still haven't figured out. Maybe we can pool our blogging knowledge and figure out how to get a pleasing look for our blogs.
In our Blogging Series, please let me know what else you'd like to see covered. If I don't know how to do it, I will attempt to find someone who does. Just leave a comment or email me with your ideas.