Here's a link to a fantastic Picmonkey tutorial!

If you want to make images for your blog like this, just head on over to this great tutorial over at A Typical English Home.  This gave me the push I needed to get more creative.

Taking a screen shot and putting it into a post

The snippet above is part of an old screen shot of my main blog, Carole's Chatter. I posted about this ages ago - before this little blog had any followers so I thought it might be helpful for you.

The screen shot can be of anything you like.

First, you probably all know how to do a screenshot - I didn't - probably one of the last few in the Western World! But just in case, for most pc's you will find a button labelled "Print Screen" just above the "Insert" key in the block of buttons to the right of the main keyboard. On my laptop it is the row of buttons at the top just to the right of F12 and is labelled "prt sc". On some laptops you might need to push the function or shift button at the same time to get to it.

Now, it doesn't actually print the screen - it saves it to your clipboard. Then you need to crop it to just show the bit you want to copy in to your blog. There are probably heaps of different ways you can do this but I did this (sorry Mac users I don't know if you can do it like this):

Open Paint. You will find this by clicking the Windows icon right at the bottom right of your screen. Then click All Programs, then scroll down to Accessories and you will find Paint listed there. I actually dragged it onto my bottom toolbar so I can get to it quickly each time I want to use it.

Then click Paste - at the top left and bingo, your screenshot will appear. Then you have to select the area you want to copy. I found the best way to do this was to click select (just a bit to the right from paste) and then click free form selection and then go back and click rectangular selection - for some reason this makes selecting easier. You then click at the top right of the part you want to copy and drag it diagonally until you have it all in the box. Then click Crop (which is one to the right of Select).

Then all you do is go to the Blue tab above paste and click on the little arrow beside it and it will give you an option to Save As - save it in whatever folder you want (I now have one called Blog Tips).

Then you just insert it into your post the way you would any image.

Some Favourite Blog Names

Just for a bit of fun I thought I would share with you some of my favourite blog names.  I would like to hear from you about yours, too!

Give Peas a Chance – a food blog with a lovely allusion to the Beatles number – Give Peace a Chance – always makes me smile.

There's Always Thyme to Cook – another word play makes this name memorable.

Annie One Can Cook – fantastic!

I Believe I Can Fry – would you believe it took me a while to get the musical reference!  Fun!

Given to Distracting Others – reminds me of some of my own school reports!

Vanilla Clouds and Lemon Drops – just conjures up lovely images

Jarrah Jungle – nice alliteration – and Jarrah is an Australian wood – great name for an Aussie blog.

Ms. En Place – great name for a food blog  - word play on the restaurant term – mise en place

Or Until Golden Brown – great allusion to what many recipes say about cooking times!

Between the Covers – clever name for a book blog although I suspect it gets some hits for quite different reasons!

Killer Bunnies – why is this in the list – well I just think it is such a quirky name for a vegetarian food blog.

I have linked the name of each of these blogs to their homepages so you can check them out easily if you would like to.

If only I had put as much thought into my main blog name – which is pretty bland – but I'm not going to change it!  I've grown accustomed to its face  name!