If you visited earlier today you may have noticed that the design on this blog was changing. I received a message from a reader that was concerned because the theme changed when they went from one post to another and then back again when they went to a third post and that it didn’t change after that. (No Anne, you’re not having a flashback and you’re not delusional.) This morning I uploaded my brand new custom design and started unpacking, as it were. I only left it live for a minute or two at a time because I didn’t want it to remain live until I was fully moved in and could unveil it along with my review of the designer. And so here we are.

Cathy Tibbles of Healing Designs has been hard at work on my custom design for a couple of weeks now. She began by asking if I wanted to stay with the theme I was using. If she knew then what she knows now she should have run then, because besides creating my new design she also got to create it on a theme I was not using. Fortunately for me, she’s a brave lady. All I could tell her about the design I wanted was that it should go with my blog title, Val’s Views, and that it needed to be recognizable. I was able to tell her I wanted to use bright pastels or primary colors and that I didn’t want the theme to look dark. A lot of direction I gave her there, huh?

Cathy went to work immediately. She looked through this blog and at least one of my others to get a feel for who I am and what I write. She came up with a nice header that didn’t do it for me and I felt really bad about telling her that. She came up with two more headers that were even nicer which still weren’t quite what I wanted. I felt sort of guilty telling her they weren’t quite what I wanted either but that I would settle for one of them. Cathy didn’t want me to settle, she wanted me to be happy. Talk about taking pride in your work and wanting to please the client! Wow! Just when both of us probably thought a header couldn’t be made to please me, she came up with the header as you see it now, which made me (and her too, I’m sure) very happy. From there it was full steam ahead.

With the header complete, she tinkered with lots of details and made a number of adjustments for me. She also made a gravatar for the theme, my very first gravatar I might ad. She made a favicon for me. She even thought it would be neat if we added a spot for images that representing current giveaways up top. Rather than have plain old navigational buttons or links, she put those neat floaty buttons on for me. Go ahead, hover over them. They’re fun! I played with them for almost five minutes. Cathy was friendly, patient, professional and open to discussion throughout the entire process. I couldn’t be more pleased or recommend her more highly.

Cathy has been generous enough to offer Healing Designs Package #1 to one lucky winner of this giveaway. I advise you to get in on this giveaway, because with the great work Cathy does she’ll be booked months in advance before long. If you can’t wait for the giveaway to be over to see if you win, stop by the Healing Designs site and take a look at her free themes. To enter, visit Healing Designs and enter the monthly contest for a new header. (This will open in a new window.) Take a look around her site while you’re there. Then leave a comment on this post describing what you’d want in a theme if you could have any theme you wanted. Not required to enter but welcome is feedback on my new design. Only comments that contain the requested information will be eligible. Contest ends Saturday 08/23/08 at 11:59pm est. Good luck to all!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS OVER.

Tags: design, giveaway, review
Posted in Computers/Tech, Giveaways, Reviews |