There are lots of wordpress themes out there, but I always wanted something a little bit different and not so commercial. After all, this is my personal blog. And because I scrapbook I see nice blog themes all the times, usually related to a new scrapbook kit. But most of those themes are for blogger, not wordpress. There are design companies that will make you a site for wordpress, but they usually cost more than I want to spend. Especially when for less than $5 I can get a blogger theme. It takes a little bit of tweaking, but I finally figured out how to use a blogger theme for wordpress thanks to a lot of people on the internet.
The first thing necessary for using blogger themes, is to find a theme you like. Lots of scrapbooking sites sell blogger themes. I’ve gotten them from GGDigitalDesigns, SweetShoppeDesigns, GottaPixel, etc. Some blogwear comes ready for wordpress with a theme included, but it’s difficult to find them. There are lots more available for blogger. So once you’ve chosen your blogwear, extract it to your computer and look at what’s included. Usually there’s a header or two, some tags, and maybe a divider.
If you have a photo editor, like Photoshop Elements or Photoshop, open it up and make the changes you want to the header file. Most blogwear come with a couple of headers. If you don’t have a photo editor, Paint.NET is a free photoshop type. But if all you want is the occasional editing, an online program will probably work well for you. Pixlr is an option. You need to be able to work in layers for making changes to blogwear images.
I open up my photo and blogwear image in Pixlr.
Using the Marquee tool, select the part of the photo you’ll be using in your header.
I’m focusing on my children and not using all the background. You’ll end up with marching ants around what you selected.
Edit—>Copy (or Ctrl+C) and then click on the header image. Now Edit—>Paste (or Ctrl+V) and the part of the photo you selected and copied will now appear on the header image.
You need to go over to the Layers box and move the photo (layer 2) below the header (layer 0). Layer—>Move layer down or just click and drag layer 2 below layer 0.
Using the Move tool, move your photo around until it looks like it’s in the right place.
Now my photo is too big so I need to shrink it down. Using Edit—>Free Transform (or Ctrl+T) change the size of the photo until you are happy with it. Make sure that all the blank space in the header image is filled.
Now that you’re happy with placement, let’s delete the excess photo. Select the header image layer by clicking on that layer in the Layer box. Using the Wand tool, click on a blank, outside spot of the image. You know have dancing ants again.
Now select the photo layer and then hit Edit—>Clear or DEL. Most of the photo outside of the header image is done, but there is still some left.
The easiest way to get rid of it is to use the Eraser tool.
With the photo layer still selected and the eraser selected, go around and carefully erase the parts of the photo outside the header image.
If you mess up and erase part of the photo, just use Ctrl+Z to undo. When you are done this is what you are left with.
Save it as something simple to remember. It’s best to save the header as a png so that the background can show through.
If you don’t want to use a header with pictures than that’s very simple. Open up your header in a photo editor (even paint would work) and simply choose what font you want to use and type in your blog name or whatever you wish. Save as above.
I really thought I could talk about installing blogger themes in wordpress in one, maybe two posts, but it looks like it will be quite a few posts. Next time the post will be about the rest of the images.
