Badge Craze

I remember going through a badge phase as a kid and I would cover my beanies, denim jacket and school bag in bright coloured buttons and souvenir badges. The craze has returned!

I've notice many other clever bloggers have a badge for their blogs, so I googled for some advice on making one and now I have:

So, of course, once the girls saw my badge, they wanted their own, and after a few more experiments:

Want a badge, but don't know how?

I found my instructions through this site:

But I had a few problems with my html - I got the mysterious question mark in place of my picture.

After I created my badge, by choosing my picture (I used my header pic so it matched my blog) and adding text in Adobe Photoshop (you could also do this in Microsoft Publisher, Paint or any other graphic program), I saved the image as a jpeg (more techie people will probably know if there is a better format).

Then I uploaded it to my flickr account (you could also use Photobucket, these are online sites where you can upload your pictures and  have them stored there). Whichever site you've chosen, click on your badge pic and on then choose the "Share This" link or "direct url". You'll need the "Grab the HTML" code (but not just yet).

If you have a blogger blog, choose to customise and "add a gadget", pick the one that lets you add a HTML code.

Copy the code suggested on the Parajunkee Design blog (linked to the badge above) and follow those instruction... BUT... Once you've inserted your blog http address and the HTML code from flickr, you'll need to play with it to get the size right. Flicker insert code to make it a specific height and width. SO... where it says:

width="500" height="169" alt="PaperDollsBadge"

Replace that with:

border="0" width="90%" alt="PaperDollsBadge"

This means, wherever your badge is posted, it will fit.

I also found I ended up with an extra  / >" but I found the little culprit and deleted him. Perhaps if you know an easier way or a source of better instructions you could share the link in the comments :-) 

My only other hint? Say on the badge what type of blog you have, you're more likely to get interested people come visit!