How to: Create a Button for a Blog - Part 1

Let me start by saying Piknik.com is the shiz.  This site let me EASILY create the custom "Living Today's Tech" button.  Within the website's program, I was able to search for some picture to use as a starting point, then customize using a host of different options.  After, I could cut, crop, or resize to my heart's content.  I must say, it was some VERY impressive free software.


Now then, let's get on with it.

How to Create a Button for a Blog:

1. Visualize what you want your blog button to look like.
• This is extremely important, because one can quickly be overwhelmed by all the options outs there.
2. Go to www.Picnik.com and click "Get started now!"

• After a brief load screen, you're ready to get started.

      3.  Your next screen should give you several options.  The ones we are interested in are "Upload a photo" and/or "Open a Demo photo" (see photo below).  In my case, I clicked "Open a Demo."  

      4.  Once in the program, you are once again faced with several options to get to the raw picture you are wanting to edit.  If you plan on pulling a random picture from a search engine (as I did for mine), click the link under "library" which the arrow is pointing to below.  Otherwise, make your selection and move on. 

How the selection process looks

      5.  Once you've made your selection, click "Edit" at the bottom of the photo.  Once in the editor, your screen should look like the picture below.

Zoom using the tool in the bottom-right.

My next steps were to crop and re-size the picture.  Finally, I added a load of special effects from the website's free options.  Each of these is covered in the next part of the story.

---continued in How to: Create a Button for a Blog - Part 2

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