Do-It-Yourself Blog Background Ideas: How to Create Your Own!

Tired of visiting other people's blogs to find out, yet again, someone else has your exact same free blog background? Having your own customized background can be fun as well as instrumental in showing off your personality. Do you love your cats and want everyone else to know it? Can you not find a blog template that suits your fashion-forward ways? Do you want questionable visitors to instantly see, by the picture of you and your spouse, that you are indeed taken?

Whatever the reason is, there's hope in creating your own perfect blog background specifically tailored to your style and preferences. Below are four background types to think about. When you're ready for file sizing and installation tips, you can head on over to The Cutest Blog on the Block for some helpful directions.

Block Background Using an Editing Program's Textured Presets

Sometimes all you really want for your background is some sort of blending-in texture for the middle and matching but more decorative borders on the sides. Editing programs like Adobe Photoshop and its free alternative GIMP come with textured and patterned presets you can fill any given area in. Using a combination of these patterns can give your blog a polished and customized look without being too flashy.

Block Background Using Free Stock Photography

If textured presets sound too boring, you might be interested in creating your customized blog background using free stock photos, for example, from a site like Stock.Xchng. Whether you choose one picture or a combination of photos to work with, you can play around with the arrangement to make something that's just right for you.

Block Background Using Your Own Pictures

And if your heart is set on showing off your own photography skills or your gorgeous family, you can create a blog background using your own photos. Keeping in mind that text is hard to read on color-complicated backgrounds, you might try keeping the blog's center fairly tame and focusing your editing efforts on the left and right side columns.

Blog Background with Simple Solid Colors

If the previous suggestions seem too fancy, or seem like too much work, you might try using a mix of simple colors that you love to create your own blog background. This option also has the advantage of providing a seamless backdrop to your blog. Unless you change the html coding to do otherwise, whatever background you upload to your blog will stay stationary while your visitors scroll up or down. That's not universally negative, but it can be a turn off for some. Hence, using one solid color, or a group of solid colors vertically placed, can keep your blog unique yet simple--while also disguising the fact that your background is, in fact, motionless. Pairing a fun header with a solid background can keep your blog visually interesting while maintaining an overall uniformity.