A new look...

It's all change here! Firstly I was tired of how my blog was looking but didn't just want to pick a new background from a site- I wanted something that was just mine and all coordinated! I loved the colours of the Stuff to Scrap April Blog Train 'Spring Picnic' papers and elements so have used them to create this all by myself! I used Photoshop and lots of tutorials from Kevin and Amanda, Cutest Blog on the Block and Shabby Blogs. Even with the tutorials I was hugely out of my comfort zone with computers- I am not the IT bod in our family and he isn't interested if it relates to my blog! It has taken alot of time and much head scratching, but I'm really pleased with the result and I have learned loads.
I created the background first because I wanted it to be really clean and simple and if I couldn't get that to work there was no point. I had trouble getting it to look right at first because it wouldn't fill the screen- I'm not sure what I did but it seems to be working now! Please leave me a comment if it looks wrong on your computer so I can have another go- I'm a perfectionist!!
Next came the post dividers which wasn't too bad because I did one before during my first scary attempt at changing my blog.
Encouraged by what I had done so far I tackled the header next. I like the way it turned out and especially that I managed to remove the box that Blogger always puts around it.
Blogger was only giving me quite pale colours for the post titles, links etc so I found out how to add custom colours using hex codes.
Finally I followed a really complicated tutorial to change the fonts on my titles- this was where I nearly gave up!
So what do you think?

Another change is that I am going back to part-time teaching- yay!!!
I love my class so it will be hard to hand them back to my colleague, who is now much better, but I am really looking forward to having more time and may even manage a card or two now- It has been soooo long!