Adding Unique Borders to Your Images

You may have noticed that I have a gold border around most of the images on my blog. I choose gold as a border because it is one of the colors I'm using to give my blog a cohesive look.

In this post, I want to show you how you can add your own unique borders to your images. You can do as I have done and apply the same border to all or most of your images, or you can apply a border to a particular image.

I'm not an expert on CSS and HTML coding. In fact, I know very little about it. But there are lots of great tutorials out there which can help you know what code to use and where to put it in your template. I use Blogger as my platform, so I specifically search for tutorials related to it when I'm trying to find out how to do something.

It's easy enough to add a border that's a color around your images. The code for that is:

      .post img { border: #000000 2px solid; }

Using that code results in a thin black border around your images in your blog posts.

I didn't want just a flat looking border, however. I wanted the gold in my border to shine. So, I started looking around for other ways I could achieve that.  I ran across information about how you can create borders with images using CSS3.  I didn't really understand the technical explanation of it, but I thought that this could possibly be my ticket to a shiny gold border if I could figure out how to do it.

So I searched for more information and found a site that allows me to generate a CSS3 border from an image.  I can upload the image from my computer or I can copy the image location from where it resides on the internet and paste that in to generate the code for the border.

To find an image that I wanted to use as my border, I again went to Creative Commons and used CC's image search to find an image that has no restrictions on its use.  Going back to my previous post about using images to customize your blog, I decided that a rope border would fit perfectly with my rustic-cowboy-ranch theme.  I had added the rope image I found to a Picasa Web album, so I right-clicked on that image and copied the image location.  Then I pasted it into the IMAGE: line of the border-image-generator.  You will immediately notice that once you've pasted the image in and clicked off that line that the border appears at the bottom with code.  Then you can make choices about border size, offset, and border repeat.  You can also choose to remove the center of the border (fill border), which I recommend.

You have to play around with these choices until you see a border that looks like you want it to look.  Border size is of course the width of the border on each side.  If you can't get this perfectly proportioned using the generator, you can adjust this later in the template when you paste the code into it.  The offset option helps keep the border from being distorted no matter the size of the image.  The border repeat will determine if the border is rounded, repeated or stretched.  I always use rounded, because that looks the best to me.

 In my image above, I have added the rope border.  This is how I generated it in the border-image-generator.

So, to add the border image to every blog post, I would add the code generated by the border-image-generator to my template (Template - Edit HTML - look for

and insert the following code immediately before it):

.post img {
border-style: solid;
border-width: 16px 21px 15px 22px;
-moz-border-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdcuTO6jO-bbsCunDoeFMTKHdOktB7NECp4mmH_mv0vJNA8N4TqTnVV_1GUxJ8yeIby53ZXOpR2JFwJA3VDyCPvYORwnPWnO63D8sIyVeKWWmQc7N_AGwMmC95x3ZnZ36fzbJiwfMFl0M/s640/rope-219716_1280.jpg) 127 173 125 170 round;
-webkit-border-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdcuTO6jO-bbsCunDoeFMTKHdOktB7NECp4mmH_mv0vJNA8N4TqTnVV_1GUxJ8yeIby53ZXOpR2JFwJA3VDyCPvYORwnPWnO63D8sIyVeKWWmQc7N_AGwMmC95x3ZnZ36fzbJiwfMFl0M/s640/rope-219716_1280.jpg) 127 173 125 170 round;
-o-border-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdcuTO6jO-bbsCunDoeFMTKHdOktB7NECp4mmH_mv0vJNA8N4TqTnVV_1GUxJ8yeIby53ZXOpR2JFwJA3VDyCPvYORwnPWnO63D8sIyVeKWWmQc7N_AGwMmC95x3ZnZ36fzbJiwfMFl0M/s640/rope-219716_1280.jpg) 127 173 125 170 round;
border-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdcuTO6jO-bbsCunDoeFMTKHdOktB7NECp4mmH_mv0vJNA8N4TqTnVV_1GUxJ8yeIby53ZXOpR2JFwJA3VDyCPvYORwnPWnO63D8sIyVeKWWmQc7N_AGwMmC95x3ZnZ36fzbJiwfMFl0M/s640/rope-219716_1280.jpg) 127 173 125 170 round;
}

If I wanted to change the border width at this point, I could.  For example, I could make all sides the same width by changing my code to: border-width: 15px (make it thinner by decreasing the number or thicker by increasing the number).

If you want to add the border to a single image, you can do that in your post that contains the image.  Once you've inserted the image in your post, click on html.  You'll see the code for the image.  Look for the part of the image that has code like this:

img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjmqhERdbRPOeLZeA0ZIAazI1Dlf9xlqei2A1eAAt64VUYKz160EjdfT7luZphrVLL1kfplXKvkoAidsPtfJS1HDWZHvShbrKIzVLft5RgZ1qOUzwWJmOoWI7RvhXYBR2wdUU08OTBjJo/s400/customize2.png" width="400"

Immediately after the src statement (src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjmqhERdbRPOeLZeA0ZIAazI1Dlf9xlqei2A1eAAt64VUYKz160EjdfT7luZphrVLL1kfplXKvkoAidsPtfJS1HDWZHvShbrKIzVLft5RgZ1qOUzwWJmOoWI7RvhXYBR2wdUU08OTBjJo/s400/customize2.png") insert style= and then the code in quotes that was generated by the border-image-generator.  In my example, it would be:

style="border-style: solid; border-width: 16px 21px 15px 22px; -moz-border-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdcuTO6jO-bbsCunDoeFMTKHdOktB7NECp4mmH_mv0vJNA8N4TqTnVV_1GUxJ8yeIby53ZXOpR2JFwJA3VDyCPvYORwnPWnO63D8sIyVeKWWmQc7N_AGwMmC95x3ZnZ36fzbJiwfMFl0M/s640/rope-219716_1280.jpg) 127 173 125 170 round; -webkit-border-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdcuTO6jO-bbsCunDoeFMTKHdOktB7NECp4mmH_mv0vJNA8N4TqTnVV_1GUxJ8yeIby53ZXOpR2JFwJA3VDyCPvYORwnPWnO63D8sIyVeKWWmQc7N_AGwMmC95x3ZnZ36fzbJiwfMFl0M/s640/rope-219716_1280.jpg) 127 173 125 170 round; -o-border-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdcuTO6jO-bbsCunDoeFMTKHdOktB7NECp4mmH_mv0vJNA8N4TqTnVV_1GUxJ8yeIby53ZXOpR2JFwJA3VDyCPvYORwnPWnO63D8sIyVeKWWmQc7N_AGwMmC95x3ZnZ36fzbJiwfMFl0M/s640/rope-219716_1280.jpg) 127 173 125 170 round; border-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdcuTO6jO-bbsCunDoeFMTKHdOktB7NECp4mmH_mv0vJNA8N4TqTnVV_1GUxJ8yeIby53ZXOpR2JFwJA3VDyCPvYORwnPWnO63D8sIyVeKWWmQc7N_AGwMmC95x3ZnZ36fzbJiwfMFl0M/s640/rope-219716_1280.jpg) 127 173 125 170 round;"

Just for fun and to show you how you can really customize your images depending on your theme, I decided to try an animal print border.  This is the code from the border-image-generator.

Using that code, I can add this border to my image or images.

So, in this post alone, I've used three different borders - my shiny gold one, a rope border that fits the theme, and an animal print border just for kicks.

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Customize your blog

I have been wanting to open a shop independent of a selling platform.  Because I'm not a huge volume seller, I didn't want to spend a great deal of money in the process.  After researching options, I decided to open a shop by integrating my Blogger site with the Ecwid Shopping Cart.  Blogger is free and Ecwid is free for up to ten items which is great for trying it out. 

I wanted a custom look for my blog and shop.  Again, though, I didn't want to spend a great deal of  money.  So, I googled (a lot) and was able to understand enough css and html to do some basic customization myself.

I want to share some of what I've learned to help others who would also like to get a custom look for their blogs.  In this post, I'll talk about customizing images that you can use on your blog in various ways.  Images are a big part of making your blog stand out and look different from all the rest.  I like a blog to have a specific theme, and it's easy to use images to carry that theme throughout the blog (and shop, if you have one).  For the images I'm using today, I chose a rustic-cowboy-ranch kind of theme.

To make the custom images for the blog, I need to start with other images.  I prefer to use Creative Commons (CC) to find those images, because I don't want to violate any copyright laws and I am able to find images that have been published under a CC license which will allow me to use them for free and with no restrictions (be sure to check the CC license because some images do have some restrictions).  I like the images provided by the Open Clip Art Library and Pixabay, both of which I can search through CC. 

I'm going to first find some background images to use, so I search CC with various terms and phrases including "rust" and "rusty background."  Then, I download those I like.  The backgrounds will be used not only as backgrounds in images but also as the backgrounds for the images which are placed on the background.  For example, in the image I created above, I have used a total of four backgrounds that I downloaded from Pixabay.

I knew I wanted to start this post with an image containing the post title. I had found a terrific post from Design Your Own Blog, on creating gold foil text to add to your blog.  I used her technique on Pixlr to create the text "Customize your blog" with one of the rusty backgrounds I had downloaded from Pixabay.  Her post has very detailed instructions, so I won't repeat them here except to say that it's important to save the text image as a .PNG file to give it a transparent background.

Once I had my text done, I wanted to combine it with a background for the title image I was creating to begin this blog post.  I used Microsoft Paint to accomplish this.  In Paint, I opened my background file and viewed it at 50% (because I couldn't see it all otherwise).  Before I inserted the title file, I clicked on the down arrow under Select and clicked Transparent selection.  This is important because the title image I am going to open next is a .PNG file which means it has a transparent background.  I want it to retain its transparent background when I open it, so that requires me to click Transparent selection before I open the image.  I then open the title image and resize it by pulling on the corners of the image and move it to wherever I would like it to appear on the background.  Once I'm finished, I save the file.  I always save files as .PNG, even though in Paint you lose the transparency once you save the file.  Since I'm just using Paint to combine images with an overall background, it doesn't matter that I lose the transparency.

 I tried a couple of different combinations but was happier with the second.

However, I wanted additional elements on my image.  It looked kind of plain jane.  So I downloaded more images from Pixabay with silver and textured backgrounds and also some star shapes from Open Clip Art Library and then returned to Pixlr.  Instead of making text this time, I was making shapes.  I opened my silver background image (making sure I was viewing it at 100%) and then opened the star image on top of it.  I selected (ctrl a) and copied (ctrl c) the star image and then pasted it (ctrl v) on the silver background.  I resized it to fit on the background image (Image - Image size).  Then I selected the wand tool and clicked on the star.  If I had an image with more than one star, I clicked on the first star and then held the shift button down to select additional stars.  This was the trickiest part for me, because sometimes parts of the background would be outlined in my selection and I would have to start over and be more careful of where exactly I was clicking. Sometimes I would make selections that didn't look right when I got rid of the background.  So, this was definitely a trial and error process, although the more I did it, the better I became at making the right selections the first time.  You definitely need to be careful of where you're putting the wand when you make your selections.  Put it as close to the middle on whatever it is you're selecting.  Once you have the shaped outlined, you can complete the process as described for the gold foil effect.

When I finished, I had various star images I could use.  These were all in separate files.

Using Paint, I opened the image with my background and title and went through the same process to add the stars.  Not only did I use files containing different backgrounds for the stars, I used some files more than once, until I had as many stars as I thought appropriate.  Then, I saved my final image in .PNG format.

But, that wasn't the end of my blog customization.  I thought I would like a profile picture that reflects my theme.  I found a cowboy and a boot on the Open Clip Art Library and downloaded those.  Then, I opened a background on Pixlr and went through the process with the cowboy and boot that I had with the stars.

Using Paint, I combined the two images into one for my profile picture.

I liked the textures so well that I played around with some other possible images to add to my site.

Truthfully, the possibilities are endless for what you can create.  I don't have a rustic-cowboy-ranch theme but I almost want one when I saw the cool effects and images that can be created.  And, I did all this without owning Photoshop or spending any money on software.

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DIY Embroidery Hoop Wall Art for Nursery

I love the embroidery hoop wall art that I see on Pinterest and everywhere else these days and fortunately, my niece does too.  So, I decided to make some for the baby's nursery.  I wanted to use different fabrics so I found someone on Etsy who was destashing some fabric remnants in exactly the colors I needed, primarily red and blue.

I also found someone on Etsy selling a lot of embroidery hoops in different sizes and shapes.  Purchasing these was more economical than buying the hoops separately.
I placed a piece of fabric in the hoop and pulled it as tight as possible before turning the screw at the top to close it even tighter.  The outside piece of the hoop would rise a little as I was tightening the screw but I would just push it down and that helped the fabric go even more taut.

Then, I trimmed the fabric around the edge of the hoop, leaving about three quarters of an inch of the fabric all the way around.

The fabric would be glued to the inside back of the hoop.  But to give the embroidery hoops a finished and professional look, I needed to buy some felt and insert that into the back also.  My first step in that process was to draw an outline of the embroidery hoop on the felt and cut it out.


I then glued the fabric hanging over the side onto the inner rim of the embroidery hoop on the back.  You could use a glue gun to do this, but I don't like glue guns so I used Aleene's Fabric Fusion.

Using my fingers, I pushed the fabric down in place on the glue.  This got a little messy because I ended up with glue on my hands.

Then I put the piece of felt into the back of the hoop and pushed the edges over the top of the fabric that I had just glued into place.  If the fabric was thin, the glue I had used for the fabric was usually enough to hold the felt in place.  But if the fabric was thicker, I had to add some additional glue to hold the felt in place.  Just be careful not to overuse the glue.  It will bleed through to the fabric on the front of the piece.

I used different fabrics on each piece and loved how they looked together.

But I wanted to personalize them even more.  If you remember from my previous post, I am using a teddy bear theme in the nursery and am also throwing some baseball into the mix for the father.  I know you probably can't tell, but the light blue fabric in one of the hoops has teddy bears.  So, I bought some teddy bear and baseball appliques and added them to the hoops.  Even though the appliques were iron-on, I glued them on.  I also added an applique for the letter of the baby's first name.

These will go above the crib and can be left close together or spread out more on the wall.

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DIY Bridesmaid Bouquets

My niece is having six bridesmaids - that's a lot when you're DIY'ing. This project took me awhile to complete. Of course, I wanted something that would match her bouquet.  Since I had a lot of vintage rhinestone buttons in my stash, I decided I would make flowers for the bouquet and use the buttons as the center of the flowers. I started with circles of fabric - lace, tulle, satin and chiffon - in colors of red and yellow. And I used the burn technique to melt the edges and center of the fabric to create interesting shapes (this is the same technique I used for the corsages I made earlier). Again, there a lot of blogs which cover how to do this, so I won't cover it here. Just be very careful you don't burn yourself and use fabric that will melt, not burn. I had to be careful with the lace, because only a part of it would melt.

My next step was to take a floral stem wire and insert it through all layers of the fabric. Because the fabric is thin, this wasn't hard to do even though the point of the wire isn't as sharp as a pin. I threaded the button on the wire and then inserted the other end of the wire back through the fabric.

To give the flower some stability, I threaded another button through the ends of the wire on the backside and then twisted the wire together.

For each bridesmaid bouquet, I wanted a total of three flowers.

My next step was to use some of the feathers that I had used in the bridal bouquet to wrap around the stems of the flowers. I cut a piece of white tape and put the feather trim on it. I had a long enough piece of tape that I would be able to wrap it completely around the stems several times.

If you're using feather trim like I have, make sure you have the feathers in the right position on the stem. I made the mistake on one of wrapping the feathers towards the stems instead of towards the flowers and had to remove the tape which was a major headache. The feathers like to stick to the tape and are hard to work with anyway.

The next step was to add a couple of hydrangea stems to the bouquet. These are the same hydrangeas that I used in the bridal bouquet. I wrapped floral tape around all the stems - the three flowers and the hydrangea stems.

After looking and looking for something to use as the handle of the bouquet to give the bouquet some stability, I found a black plastic Riser Flex Pipe at Home Depot that I thought would work. It's hollow in the middle. It measures 1/2" by 24". I cut it in 6" segments to use as the handles for the bouquets. When I inserted the stem of the bouquet into the pipe, it fit perfectly and was a tight enough fit, that the handle would not come off without being pulled.

Next, I wrapped the black pipe stem in yellow ribbon and glued it in place with hot glue.

It didn't look perfect at that point but that was ok, because I took a piece of lace and wrapped that around the handle over the yellow ribbon. I also used hot glue to glue it in place. The lace gave the bouquet a vintage look and covered the imperfections in the ribbon.

Once I had the handle finished, I put it onto the stem of the bouquet. This is a picture from the wedding with all of the bouquets I made!

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DIY wedding doily lanterns

In looking around for ideas for reception decorations, I saw several sites discussing the use of doilies for making lanterns or lamps. So after consulting with my niece, that is what we decided to do for her wedding. The goal is to make approximately ten doily lanterns in ivory, red and yellow in different sizes which will hang at different lengths from the ceiling in the middle of the room. Then, ivory fabric will be draped from the middle of the ceiling to the walls. There will be tea lights in the doily lanterns. Combined with the candle centerpieces, this will look very romantic and beautiful, I hope.

I read up on how to stiffen doilies to make lanterns from as many sources as I could find. However, when I started making them, I did a lot of experimenting to see what product would stiffen the best and hopefully allow the doilies to retain their shape from now until the end of June. I have some tips to share based on my experiments.

To make the round lantern shape, I decided to use balloons as my base. The benefit of using balloons is that they are extremely cheap and you can blow them up to any size you want. They can be big or small, depending on what size you want the lantern to be.

In my experimentation phase, I tried real crochet doilies. This was a total flop for me. In order to cover the balloon and have the size of the lantern I wanted, I had to use a relatively large doily. The problem I had was that I had trouble overlapping the parts of the doily that needed to come back together for the hole at the top of the lantern. When the doily dried, it looked pretty awful because it was all lumpy and not smooth. Either my doilies needed to be thinner material or I needed to use more than one that were smaller in size. So, what I finally ended up doing to get a decent doily lantern - and it really turned out to be a lace lantern - was to cut small circles out of lace. I'll talk more about my process a little later.

As far as stiffening the lace, I experimented with three different products. First of all, I tried wallpaper paste because several sites had recommended this as a stiffener. It was the worst of the three products I tried. I actually immersed my lace circles in the wallpaper paste - I wore disposable rubber gloves and worked at the sink. When the paste had dried and I removed the balloon, the lantern immediately sank in. It did not retain its shape at all.

The second product I tried was clear Elmer's glue. Again, I wore gloves and immersed the lace circles in the glue. When I removed the balloon, the lantern retained it's shape as long as it sat in one place and I didn't move it around or handle it. Excessive handling caused it to develop crevices in its surface.

The third and most successful product I tried - and the one which I will use for all my lanterns - is Plaid Stiffy Fabric Stiffener which I bought at Michael's. Using this, the lanterns have held up really well, at least in the short term.

I use the same technique with this product as I did the others. I pour the product in a bowl and then place my lace circles in it and make sure that they are covered with the product on both sides.

In fact, when I take them out to put them on the balloon, I squeeze all the extra product out. I then start putting the circles on the balloon, making sure to overlap the pieces. I have the balloon sitting on a disposable plastic cup as I'm working with it. I also leave it on the cup to dry. It makes a perfect surface for this. The excess product will actually drain down into the cup.

Just an FYI here about the size of the lace circles, you will need smaller circles for smaller lanterns but can use larger circles for larger lanterns. I found that I had some bulges in the surface of my lantern if the circles were too big for the size of the lantern.

Once I finish putting all my circles on the balloon - and I have the balloon upside down in my cup so that the top of the lantern is actually the top of the balloon - I go back with a paint brush and put extra product on all the seams and make the surface of the lantern as smooth as I can.

I found that the product takes awhile to dry. I always leave it overnight. In the morning, I turn the balloon upside down because the bottom is still wet since all the product ran that way. Then I leave it sit to dry that part.

I wanted to add some sparkle to my lantern. I first tried Mod Podge after I had removed the balloon and there was no support. This didn't work very well, because: 1) the Mod Podge didn't spread very well and 2) the lantern became wet again and wanted to collapse. So, I bought some spray on glitter and have been adding that before I remove the balloon and after the stiffener has dried. This has worked much better.

Once everything is dry, I take a pin and stick it into the balloon. Because the lace had product on both sides, sometimes the balloon sticks. I usually put my hand in the opening at the top of the lantern and help it along if it needs it. Fortunately, this hasn't caused my lanterns to collapse from the inside but I did have that problem with the glue and wallpaper paste.

Since the wedding isn't until June, I'm going to leave the balloons in until closer to that time. I don't want to have to worry about collapsing lanterns and there's no real reason to remove the balloons ahead of time. I just did it now because I wanted to know how they look and wanted to share that here.

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DIY Vintage Brooch Bouquet - Tutorial Part 4

I have finally finished my niece’s brooch bouquet. The last step was the bouquet handle. I wanted to use a vintage handkerchief and my mother fortunately had one from my grandmother that was bordered in lace and glass beads. It was perfect for the handle.

I went ahead and finished taping my bouquet handle. I put some more green tape around it in order to try to make it similar in size the whole way down the handle and then I wrapped white tape around that. The reason I wanted to finish with white tape is because my hankie is cream colored and I didn’t want the green tape showing through.

I assembled everything I would need – the bouquet, the hankie, some fusible interfacing, and red velvet buttons (which will tie in with other velvet pieces that will be used as part of the wedding decor).

I folded down my hankie at the top, because I wanted to have a border there. Then I measured and cut my interface to the size of the hankie minus the border. I then ironed the interface to the hankie.

I then pinned my hankie where the handle would go. To do this, I worked with the hankie on the handle until I figured out exactly where I wanted everything placed and marked it with two pins at the top. I then pulled it off and pinned it down the hankie where the handle would go.

I sewed two seams on the hankie where I had marked it with pins. I did this on my sewing machine. Then, I put the hankie on the handle.

I then wrapped the hankie around the handle and marked with a pencil where I would place my buttons. I planned to use the lace as my button holes so that was my guide for the buttons. Next, I sewed on the buttons where I had my marks.

I buttoned the hankie before putting it on the handle. It was just easier that way. And here is the finished bouquet.

Link to Part 1

Link to Part 2

Link to Part 3

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