Ha HA - I 've become a blog background designer - more tips

After that blog tips which I posted last week - I have had requests to make blog backgrounds and blinkies.
I have designed now for both the Sassy's and one of them even graciously and heartouchingly mentioned in her blog and MB.
It's not difficult at all to do it yourself as long as you keep saving your original template when you are happy with it and then play around.
I had already given 2 websites for adding navigation bar to your blog below the header in my previous posts.
Heres a few sites for the background
http://www.kevinandamanda.com/whatsnew/tutorials/how-to-make-a-scrapbook-blog-background.html
Only thing here to note is I would set the resolution as 1400 pixels x 910 pixels instead of 1600x1100.
Remember to always set your photobucket upload - more options as 1 MB.
And a nice compliment to this site  for adding more elements is
http://shabbyblogsblog.blogspot.com/search/label/tutorials
You can get digital kits from many sources from the web - both paid and free kits. As ong as you do not sell anything you will be ok to use them (just check from the source though). you will just have to give them credit.
Always a wise and more importantly a nice thing to do. The world becomes a sad world indeed if you start claiming other's stuff as yours. :)

Here are a few precautions and things to do or not do do (LOL) which I found while bumbling (and tumbling) around:

1. Just always remember to download the template first so that you can revert back to it whenever needed and take it in steps. For eg - adding background and changing the html would be one step as if you're not happy then you can revert or play with the html more. 
2. Begin by making your background a minima template.
3. If the background comes shorter leaving white spaces - do not revert as this will be either a resolution canvas size problem in which case go back and resize the canvas (so save your background as psd file or whatever the gimp format is if you're using that software). Most probably the problem will be photobucket's as if you haven't chosen the option 1 MB then it will automatically resize it to 1200. So reload  after changing and try
4. While doing blinkies and header and signatures- choose transparent background while creating and then save it as either gif or png24. If you want to use header as a blinkie then save another file without the texts so that you can add glitter text and animations to it from photobucket.
5. For blinkies while using photobucket and editing image remember to add all in one step itself and then save as if you go back to edit then the previous animation vanishes. So resize first and then add glitter text , animation stickers all before saving. Wherever possible choose transparent. (like for eg text will have transparent background checkbox - so tick that). Remember to keep the size of blinkie small from -  100 - 180 px  in width as this usually goes to the sidebar which is usually 180 - 210 in width.
6. Well that's about it. Look at the site tips for blogger and other sites and as you would have  become familiar with a little of html by this time you can play more. HTML tags and xml tags are easy to understand. It's like labeling things at home. If you label and put sugar - then you clearly know where t look for sugar don't you and you will not pick up salt by mistake. that's all the tags 
<somename> does and you have to tell it where to end so you place and end tagwhich is the same as the beginning tag except it has a backslash to it </somename>