Identity Crisis

I often get on my blog and play around with the appearance of my blog.  Seems to be happening a lot lately.  (Have you noticed?)
I finally just made myself sit down and create my own banner and the above is the result.  A graphic designer I am not, so here's the run down on my sources I used to create it all.

Image Manipulation Program

I downloaded and used GIMP.

I didn't have a good program on my Mac and GIMP is great and it's FREE.  There's a learning curve with this program as with any other program.  A huge plus is having tutorials on the web and lots of 'how to' videos on youtube.com to make that learning curve a little shorter.

Images


There are so many sources out there for graphics to use on personal sites.  Just do a search and you will quickly be overwhelmed.  The specific site I used was Pixels and Ice Cream.  The background of my banner is 'Gypsy Garden' found under 'paper kits'.

And that's it.  Well, there is the time involved to get everything just the way you want it.  And all the extra time involved when you mess up and have to start over.  Or change your mind on what you want the end result to look like and have to start over.  (Or does this only happen to me?)

So?  What do you all think?  Do you have any good sources or products or resources you like to use?