Blogger How-To: Block Quotes and Custom Designs

Bloggiesta is drawing to a close today and I wanted to share two last things I was working on.

Thanks to the patience, expertise and just plain niceness of my blogger friend Arianne I now can do this on my blog...

I can make block quotes. Like this!!!! I am so excited. I had to edit my template, but it was really easy. Arianne is going to do a post on it, and when she does, I'll link to it. 

Next, I did some research on custom blog design. This is something I'm not going to dive into right away. Even though my design is a standard Blogger one, I like it. It loads fast. Maybe by the next Bloggiesta in the fall I will pay someone to come up with some new ideas for me.

But, in case you're interested, here are what my blogger friends say about their custom designs.


Here are comments from Cristina from The Princess of Storyland:

"For me, it was very simple. I think the biggest part of it is finding a designer that you like and trust. I spent quite a few months checking out other blogs and whenever I saw a design I liked, I would immediately scroll to the bottom of the blog to see who the designer was. Every single blog I liked, was designed by Lori from Imagination Blog Designs. I spoke to many of her clients who had nothing but incredible things to say about her. And her incredibly reasonable prices were all that I needed to finally move forward and do it!

The process itself was very, very easy! Lori had me look through several graphics and choose which ones I liked. That was the hardest part for me! There were so many options and it took me a while to settle on a package, but at the end of the day I felt this one would really convey a rich storyland world that books can create. Once that was done, Lori had me choose some fonts I liked to compliment the graphics. I mostly gave her free range to do what she liked. I have never seen a design that Lori has done that I didn't like, and I trusted her implicitly!

Lori started the design on a Friday. And as she went along, she would always check with me to make sure I liked it, before she went any further.  She was so incredible and spot on with my vision! By Sunday morning my blog design was complete and it was uploaded on Monday. The entire process was so seamless and easy. There was never any downtime or issues.

I feel like she completely understood the idea and concept beyond my blog and she did an amazing job creating my design. It turned out a million times better than I had ever envisioned!"

Here's what Arianne had to say about her blog redesign:

"The process of getting a custom template is numerous. You can either pay for a template and installation, find someone who would do it for free, or do it yourself using a template somewhere. I tried to do it myself countless times but I just end up getting frustrated because the CSS codes are too advanced for me. When I was browsing some of the blogs that I follow, I came across Jude from In Between Reading and Writing.

She did a post of a before and after of someone's blog that she designed. I looked at it and saw at the bottom of the post that she does it for free! She uses templates that are pre-made and then she designs it the way you want it to look - like fonts, colors, etc. She also does the installation so you have to give her your password temporarily. After she installed mine, there were things that I wanted more of or that didn't come with her design so I went to Google and found ways to customize my blog more to fit my liking."

Thanks, guys, for sharing your experiences!