To start off, any beginners who’re seriously interested in CSS should start with CSS lessons at w3Schools. After all, a good foundation will help you go a long way!

After you’ve mastered the basics, you could now start sketching your layout. Decide which type of layout you wanna develop your blog/website into. 2 columns, 3 columns (as 5xmom likes it best), with or without header and footer, fluid or static, etc. Try these repository of ready-made CSS layouts. (codes included!)

- CSS Layouts at Glish
- Bluerobot CSS Layouts
- CSS Pages Layouts at Max Design
- A step-by-step chronology of creating a CSS layout.
- CSS layout creator – It creates layout for you in a few clicks of options.

Reason why I suggest you guys of using these layout resources is that it saves you time and you can start on its content right-away. Unless you’re creating a website that is really out-of-the-ordinary unique, or you’ve some really fresh new layout idea of your own, most of the websites out there today would just stick to the standard 2 or 3 columns layout.

At this point, you could jump straight CSS tricks and magics. Pixel2Life CSS tutorials has tons of tips and tricks on CSS, with easy-to-follow tutorials for you to learn how to create those wonderful CSS-based designs. You could make use of Max Design’s tutorials to make yourself some CSS-based lists, floating images, and selectors.

That should be enough to help you with your CSS adventure.

I’ve also found a couple of nice resources compiled for you guys at websitetips.com and w3.org. They have everything from head to toe of what you need to know about CSS.

Below are the two parts of CSS needed. The first one sets the shadow image as the background, the second one will render a border around an image. Explanation of each CSS syntax are provided to give you a better understanding of how the code works.

.img-shadow {
float:right;
background: url(trans-shadow.png) no-repeat bottom right; /* Most major browsers other than IE supports transparent shadow. Newer release of IE should be able to support that. */
}


.img-shadow img {
display: block; /* IE won't do well without this */
position: relative; /* Make the shadow's position relative to its image */
padding: 5px; /* This creates a border around the image */
background-color: #fff; /* Background color of the border created by the padding */
border: 1px solid #cecece; /* A 1 pixel greyish border is applied to the white border created by the padding */
margin: -6px 6px 6px -6px; /* Offset the image by certain pixels to reveal the shadow, as the shadows are 6 pixels wide, offset it by that amount to get a perfect shadow */
}

Save the CSS, and call it in your webpage file through the following HTML codes.

<span class="img-shadow"><img src="tutorial-kinoshita.jpg"/></span>

As I’ve explained above in the CSS code, the PNG transparent image has compatibility issues with Internet Explorer. Let’s put the codes to test with a cyan background in two of the most popular web-browsers on the Internet, Firefox and Internet Explorer. The results below, explains it all.

It is believed that Internet Explorer will be able to support that format in their “Longhorn” version which will be released soon. So as for now, IE-oriented designers should use a white background for their image, instead.

The only tools you’ll need is Photoshop and some CSS knowledge. Let me show you how it’s done, it’s easy and everyone can do it.

In Photoshop, open a new document and name is “Stamp”, make its width and height both 300 pixels, follow the parameters as follow.

I’m gonna make the stamp white. So, select White as the foreground color.

Next, select the Custom Shape Tool.

Choose the spiky edged circle in the list of custom shapes.

After that, create the shape by holding down the “Shift” key and drag the mouse along the workspace. Don’t make it too big cause we’ll need some space to put some other things in later…

In the Layers window, right click on the shape layer and click “Rasterize Vector Mask”

Next, create a new layer beneath the Shape layer.

Flood the layer with whatever dark color that you may like as this is to make the white colored shape standout and easier to work with. I flooded it with #FF9B00.

It’s time to play around with the Stamp. Right click on the “Shape 1″ layer and click on Blending Options.

I’ve set the Drop Shadow’s parameters as shown in the image above.

I need some 3Dism look to the stamp, so I checked Bevel and Emboss and set the parameters as shown above.

Remember to change the Gloss Contour as well (pick the contour as shown above).

You should have something like this after the blends.

Next off, I created another layer in the middle of the 2 layers.

It’ll be a type layer. I chose Arial as the font face with 400pt. What I need to make is a white strap to be place behind the stamp. Type in 2-3 underlines ( ___ ), and that should be able to do the job.

Then, rasterize the type layer that you’ve just made.

Make sure that the white strap is behind the stamp. Also, centralize all the layers in an order manner.

Now that you’ve created the base of the stamp, you can start putting your name, your logo, photos, just about anything you want onto the stamp. This is what I did.

Create a new layer above all layers.

Set the type parameters as these.

I’ll just use “Award” as this will be a stamp for all Awards. Up to this point, the image is ready to be used. But as for my case, I’m trying to put it on my blog, so I needed more modifications.

I’m gonna put the stamp on the left hand corner of my website, so I need to tilt it a bit to make it look like those classic tilted stamps.

Click on Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary.

I’ll tilted it 40 degrees counter-clockwise as I need to put it on the upper left hand corner. If you chose to put it on the upper right hand corner instead, rotate it 40 degree clockwise.

Select the area and make sure that the white strap is perfect and not cut-off. Then, crop the selection. Select Image > Crop.

The outcome would look like this.

If you need a transparent background, like I do, just delete the orange background in Layer 1 and save it as .GIF with transparency.

Now, the image is done. It’s time to move on to the programming part.

Copy and paste this line into your CSS file.

img.logo {
position:absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px;
}

And insert this line in the BODY part of the page where you want the stamp to appear.

<a href="http://www.xyz.com"><img src="http://www.xyz.com/where/yourimageis/stamp.gif" class="logo" /></a>

Hola! It’s done. And you should see something like this (I created a different stamp for my own blog). I do hope that you’ve enjoyed trying this tutorial.