Sea & Skies is a three column Blogger theme with a gray striped background and teal banner header. It comes with four social media icons. The page bar can be removed under gadgets and the middle column allows for photos up to 500px wide.

Plaid Picnic is a three column Blogger theme with the background peeking between the columns. It comes with six social media icons and a blog button.

I always love seeing my templates in action on other bloggers sites – here are a few of them…

Grow The Love | Sweet Grass Template

Ginger Mandy | Morning Glow Template

Where’s The Zoom | Snap It! Template in a custom color

All We Need is Mail | Pattern Party Template

[ http://themuffingtonpostmmb.blogspot.com ]

Here’s my latest design for Miss Mary-Morgan. She wanted a sweet Lolita, 1920s, burlesque dressing room-inspired design. I tried to include as many different elements as possible – flowers, hearts, pearls, bows and feathers – without going overboard and having it turn into a gaudy mess. Take a minute to stop by her blog and say hello!

Here’s the newest edition to my shop – Pattern Party, a theme for Blogger. This is a minimalist two-column theme with a white background and six coordinated social media icons. I’ll be making Pattern Party for self-hosted WordPress as well – should be online by the end of the month!

* I’m currently out of town, so if you place an order this week you’ll receive your template when I return on the 7th :)

Danielle emailed me a few days ago with some design questions and I thought I’d share my response in case anyone else is interested in getting into site design as well.

I stumbled across your blog recently and I’m really impressed with all the web design you do. I’ve been wanting to learn web design for the longest time, and I’m now officially considering going back to school and making it happen. I wanted to ask you a few questions.

1) How did you learn your web design skills (self taught? school?)? Do you have any recommendations now that you are at the point that you are?

2) This may be personal but – do you think it’s possible to survive (financially) on web design alone…making templates and custom pages? Or would you require a full-time job as well?

- Danielle

So first off, I’m a self-taught designer. I started creating pages on Angelfire and Geocities when I was in middle school and taught myself by going through the source code of sites to figure out how things were put together.

I did go to school for a degree in journalism and now work as a web designer at a TV station. Looking back, I wish I had taken freelance more seriously as a career and either gone to art school or gotten a business degree for all this small business stuff I’m having to figure out now.

If you’re interested in getting into design I would recommend starting on your own first, maybe trying to alter a Blogger template, and see if it’s something you enjoy. It takes a lot of work to get started in an industry like this, especially if you’re thinking of going the freelance route. Even though I still have the security of a 9 to 5 job, I’m working at least 60 hours a week to make sure I have enough clients when I finally do make the leap. You have to be a self-starter and have an enormous amount of motivation to keep working even when the inspiration really isn’t there.

There are lots of helpful tutorials here: http://www.w3schools.com/ If you find you have a strong passion for design, going to school or even just taking a few Photoshop or Illustrator classes would be helpful to advance your skills.

Bottom line, a degree is not necessary at all, but it will definitely make learning a lot faster.

Secondly, it is possible to live on web design alone, lots of people do it! Working solely on blogs could be a bit of a challenge, depending on how much money you need to live, because the majority of bloggers are not going to spend thousands on a redesign. You may end up needing to mix in small business clients as well or work at a design firm and do blogs on the side for fun. I’m able to add money from my template shop and teaching/performing aerial to my freelance work to fill in my budget.

I hope this post was helpful, but if any of you have more questions (on design, circus or anything else), feel free to leave a comment or send me an email xosillygrrl at gmail.com :)

Also new to the shop is the All My Heart theme for Blogger. It features a paper background, hand-drawn hearts & arrows and six matching social media icons.

I’m open to suggestions if you’d like a specific color scheme or pattern – just leave me a note in the comments!

[ gingerlee.blogspot.com ]

When Samantha first contacted me about redesigning her blog and sent me the link to her Pinterest board a pattern immediately stood out to me. She had about six images in her Style board with this color scheme…

I was very excited that 1. she had made my job so very easy, and 2. it was a color scheme I’d never designed around before.

She doesn’t post photos or even blog titles, so I wanted to make the graphics bold, but at the same time keep the design clean as to not overpower her writing. I’m thrilled with how it turned out and it gave me the inspiration to redesign my own space :)

Take a minute to visit her site here >>>

So I had a little break in my design schedule and decided to give my own blog a makeover. I’ve been staring at the same boring black & white template for months thinking it needed to be updated, but never got around to it. The color palette is different than what I usually go for, but when I started putting the elements together it just worked! What do you think?

Here’s my latest design for The Crunchy Wife! Jenny is a wife and new mom trying to find ways to live a green life. She and I actually went to middle school and high school together and spent many days in dance class and rehearsing for the school musicals. I have lots and lots of fairly embarrassing pictures of us prancing around in tea-length dresses, big curls and stage makeup.

I’m really happy with how the site came out. I wanted it to look organic and clean without heading in the hippy-dippy direction. Hop over to her site and check it out!

Happy Friday :) I’ve been working the past few days on a new premade template for Blogger. It’s all pretty pastels and a little departure from my usual style, but I love it all the same.

In just a few hours I’m headed down to The DAKA to take a belly dance class! Irina has been teaching me a few moves and now I’m going to take a class with her teacher. I’m looking foward to trying some new arm and body movements and seeing how I can incorporate them into my aerial routines. And I’m bringing my camera, so there will be evidence!

[ wearethecompanywekeep.com ]

The Company We Keep is Brian’s new band. (B for those long-time readers :) They’re recording an album as part of a project by MAD Dragon Records and Motion City Soundtrack to support emerging artists.

I have to admit, I was a little stressed out about this site. (or possibly a lot) The day after I agreed to do it the band learned that the label wanted to launch it on Tuesday aka FIVE days later. I had a very small window of time to completely design, build and upload the entire site, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. I love how the main photo has a bit of a ’90s vibe. And Brian did show up at my house at midnight Monday to shovel my sidewalk since I was working so hard.

You can get a little taste of their sound in the video below – I’ve heard one of the tracks and it’s SO GOOD. Well worth the four years Brian has been working on these songs and I might just have to use one for an aerial show soon!