Make a Blog Banner by Jill at I Know the Plans I Have for You

Hi there! My name is Jill, and my little space is called I Know the Plans I Have for You. I started my blog a year ago, and for months it was based on furniture that I gave new life to. Some of my favorite redo's have been a trashy chair brought back from the dead {check it out}, a lemonade stand that I made from pallets {take a peak here}, and a craft station that I made for my kids from a drop front crib {get drawn in here..get it ;)?}. I have such a passion for furniture and the endless possibilities. I will always love redoing furniture and all things DIY, so I don't see those blog posts ending anytime soon :)! But in the last few months, I have had some changes in my life and with these changes, I have noticed my blog changing. I feel like it is a good change.I feel like it is becoming more personal, that I am letting the world into more than just a talent…I am letting the world see me! So, I hope you will come along this journey, as I travel down the path to His plan!

Today I would like to share how to make a blog banner {or at least how I make mine}.

I LOVE EDITING PHOTOS!! I am {just a little} obsessed with the things you can do with pictures!! The poster child for my blog is my beautiful little girl, Drew Bella. She is a bit of a ham and loves a photo-shoot!

I tend to use a couple of editing sites at a time, for the various features that they each offer. I haven't found (a free one) that I absolutely love everything about…but they all have great features together. The 3 that I use on a regular basis are Photobucket, Fotoflexer, and Picmonkey. Now, to get this picture to the size of my blog, I needed to crop it, NOT just resize it. Or it would look like this….

I know that the size I want it for my page is 995×320, and I figured this out by following these steps

The width of my blog is 1240 pixels and I don't want the banner to be the entire width, so I am making the width of my picture 1000 (you can play with yours to find what you like best).

Now it is time to edit your photo (on any editing site that you like): I used photobucket for this part…

Crop your photo: I cropped my photo so that it wouldn't be distorted. For this part, I uploaded the photo to Fotoflexer {because I love their fonts}

*note: you may have to resize your photo to a larger size if it isn't large enough originally

Now you can add any text that you want…..and tada

You have your banner!

To add it to your site…

I hope that this tutorial has been helpful! I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have, or if I confused you in anyway 🙂 Please feel free to contact me!!