Holiday Blog Banner

Here's a quick and easy tip for creating a holiday banner for your blog. This one took me only 10 minutes to create using Wordle and Photoshop, but any image editing program will work. How I did it:

1. Create a word cloud at Wordle. The size of the word in the cloud is determined by the number of times you use the word in your text. I made a list of holiday-related words, then duplicated the ones I wanted to have more prominence. My blog's title had the most duplicates.
2. Modify your cloud. I changed the layout to Horizontal so it would be easily readable as a banner. I also modified the color palette. (Hint: Try using a color palette from Kuler or Colourlovers. That's what I did.)
3. Take a screenshot and open it in your image editing program. I adjusted the size of the cloud to match the width and height for my blog.
   
4. This step is optional if you're satisfied with the banner the way it is, but I decided to use the Shape tool to create the little snowflakes, reducing their opacity so they wouldn't overpower the words.
5. Upload your new banner to your blog!

I like this so much that I'm sure I'll do more as the seasons change.

renee

P.S. You can see the lifesize version at my blog.