Skinning my Blog

I finally got sick of the default skin for this blog, and after having skinned the Prophetic Fate version successfully, decided to go for a new look here.
I had this vision of an illuminated (like monks used to do) title against parchment. So step one was: make a nice parchment texture.
So what is parchment, anyway? Well, it’s the stretched, pounded, shaved and coated skin of a young, preferably unborn, calf or lamb.
How cheery. Luckily, we have computers, that can skin a million virtual unborn calves each and every second.
I chose a light cream color in Photoshop for my background. I created a new layer and set the foreground color to a slightly darker color with a hint of red, rendered clouds with it, then backed down the transparency so that all was left was an interesting texture. I then added random noise to give it a stretched look.
et voila, parchment.
The header was a box of that same color. I used that sexy Oz Handicraft font that we use for the Basil & Maude logo, added a pompous subtitle, and a lens flare, because lens flare makes anything look cool.
I also made the font size larger so I could read it…