Great Designs: My Cute Bookshelf

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I've started a new feature. Great Design is a way for me to showcase other book bloggers that have put the effort forward to learn how to do great design work. If you would like to be considered for this feature please fill out the form!

My Cute Bookshelf

What resources have you used in your design? Is there any websites you'd recommend for resources?


I use Photoshop Elements for my graphics. I like to edit them all myself and it is a helpful program. Photoshop is a paid program, but I just discovered a really good free program where you can edit graphics and make them beautiful. It’s called Photoscape and you can edit the pictures with different effects (like vintage ones) and has an amazing variety of borders. I’ve been playing around with it and the quality of the graphics is great. I recommend it to those who don’t own photo editing software and want to create graphics. Also, when it comes to making cute layouts, I’ve found that digital scrapbook websites are the best. I’ve found the cutest elements for my graphics at websites like Digi Scrap Depot. When it comes to coding, Google is the way to go. When I start tweaking my layout and something’s wrong, I’ll just google it and usually find the answer.

What do you like most about your design?


I really love my layout as a whole because it fits perfectly with my website and my personality. I wanted something cute and fun and that’s what I came up with. However, I really like the header and menu bar. I played around with different images on Photoshop, and it took me a while, but when I finished with my current header, I knew that was it. I really like the menu bar because it’s clean and sort of looks like it’s a part of the header.

What has been the biggest difficulty in getting your design to be how you want it?


For me it was the sidebar. I was having problems with widgets not showing up in the beginning, and had to edit the HTML countless times to get it right. I’ve finally fixed it how I wanted it to look. Also, making my header fit perfectly. At the beginning, it wouldn’t align on Firefox, so that was another mess. I would recommend editing your template on Notepad and not directly on Blogger. I’ve messed up a couple of times that way.

Have you enjoyed learning about design?


Definitely! It has been so much fun making the layout look the way I want it to. It’s quite frustrating when you have to work with the code for hours, but at the end of the day, I feel so proud of myself with the work I’ve done.

Some great designs over at My Cute Bookshelf.

Categories: Great Designs