Past Layouts

My first skin at this current web address. This one I didn't actually code on my own. I used one of Bre's premades and sort of manipulated the color scheme and header (with her permission) to mimic what I wanted to see. I really liked it. It was fresh, clean, and simple. I made three "rotating" banners for it (see the image) that would change every time you refreshed or went to a new page. I thought that was pretty cool. Again, I used Jensen Ackles and Garrett Hedlund, as well as a female model whose name escapes me.

This is the first one that I coded from the ground up, without the use of another person's template, without the use of a program to do it, just from php tutorials and html help sites. "Protect You" was completely from scratch, and I loved every painful second of it. The colors, purple and gold, really went well with how I was feeling at the time, in addition to the subject matter: my favorite couple from The Vampire Diaries television show and possibly my OTP, Damon Salvatore and Bonnie Bennett. I wanted something dark and magical, yet proud and stubborn. The textures and the overall effect really felt balanced to me, which is probably why it was up for so long. This layout was the start of my passion for coding layouts because I realized how fun it could be. It also served as a great learning experience.

This skin is now available as a free premade to anyone who would like it. Check it out here.

I'm not a big fan of the lighter skins, in case you can't tell by my other layouts, but I decided to challenge myself and see if I could stand looking at a brighter layout for a few weeks, at least. I decided to stick with what I know, choosing Jensen Ackles (my first and foremost graphics muse) because he's so damn photogenic that he can make anything I create look decent. I decided to once again use rounded corners for all my content boxes, even going so far as to create a completely rounded sidebar. I also made a header area so that I could put all my page titles up top. Overall, I think that it worked out pretty well, but light skins just aren't for me whatsoever, hence the quick change to Version 7. Interestingly, this skin's "enter" graphic on my index page was and still is my favorite to date.

I surprised myself by using a mostly brown theme; I never thought I would use that color prominently in any artwork I created. But somehow, the combination of the light texture and the Winchesters image just sort of brought it about and I went with it. The "Shotgun Opera" title text was, I thought, cleverly embedded into the side, and I used a difference layer to give the text a nice mysterious gradient. I also like how the sidebar sort of fades into view as it emerges from the header graphic, instead of just sort of lying there. I also took the time to create an animated "enter" image for my index, which I don't like as much as the last one. I'm slowly getting better at this, and I think this skin shows that pretty well.

The current layout. I love dark skins, as evidenced by all the other layouts I've made. But this time, I wanted to try something different with my content backgrounds. I did some research and found some neat little CSS codes that would allow me to employ a custom tiled background for the sidebar and main body text. I also coded the rounded corners; instead of making them manually in GIMP and then having the footer run off the page, I used code to achieve a cleaner, subtler effect. I'm really pleased with the results and look forward to using this coding more with future skins. Also, my enter graphic is kind of bland now, but I liked experimenting with the hover coding. Overall, this skin relies less on graphics and more on coding, which makes me feel like I'm making progress with my site.