1. The Seagull Blogskin (2008, after Japan)

This is a blogskin I made after I came back from Japan in 2008. I swear it looked different in my desktop and in Firefox, but when I relooked at it in my laptop using Google Chrome, this is what I got. I was really proud of it at that time because it was made of photos I took myself (instead of ugly drawings I have the habit of making), plus it was a lot more complicated and "fancy" than what I could do at that time. By the way, that seagull was from Japan.

2. A World on its Own (idk when I used this)


I would cringe at the name of this blogskin, except there were more cringeworthy ones. You'll see one of it later. Anyway, isn't this pretty abstract? Even I don't know what I was trying to express. And it is really ugly. This was when I started realising that if I was going to change my blogskin so frequently (I change them really frequently by the way), I might as well not change the entire layout, but change the theme, main image and colours instead. So, this led to...

3. Always Rising (some CNY period)



What a name, right? This is the more cringeworthy one I mentioned about. It was a time when phrases like "keep moving forward" and "better everyday" appealed to me. But they were just words. Anyway, I still remember this being one of my Chinese New Year blogskins. I used tailor my blogskins based on the festive season and all that, because I used to visit anime graphic design websites that do that. I miss those days.

4. Tug O' War (2011, start of poly)



This was the last layout I did in my desktop. I loved it because it was simple, the picture was nice, I was inside the picture, it was green, and there was really no reason to change it. Unfortunately, when I switched to macbook, I realised that on a higher resolution screen, it didn't look as good. The picture was taken during my poly's Freshman Orientation Camp.

5. Silence (some time in 2013)



I loved this. In case it's not obvious enough, I love red. I also love fire against darkness, glimmers of light, that sort of thing. A few layouts before this, I started using this exact template, and from then on, I hardly changed the layout, as per what I did with Always Rising (argh) and A World on its Own. The picture was taken on a nice day after the mehmehs and I went kite flying and we decided to light candles for some reason.

6. This Field of Fire (some time in 2013)



I'm really proud of this. It's almost the same concept and arrangement as the previous one, but the picture is 100% photoshopped, and it's based on a novel idea I was fantasizing on. I've rewrote the first few chapters of the same story and changed the entire flow of it for about three or four times since. I actually created a blog for one of the drafts, calling it Flying Leaves on Fire, but I didn't like it, especially since I skipped through all the descriptions to fit into blog posts. Back to the blogskin itself, I think it's one of my best.

7. Tacky candle blogskin (idk when)



At some point, I wanted to return to two-column layouts, and I did this. It's a bit tacky, like my current one, but I liked it because it was different from what I usually do. I got bored of it extremely soon, though. You have to forgive me for putting the random words; Usually, I just needed there to be words to add aesthetic value, even if the words mean nothing.

8. Fire inside a droplet of water blogskin (2014, I think)

As you can see, at some point, I got so lazy and my layout has been the same since - a one-column layout starting with a picture on top, followed by links, followed by blog posts (formatted the same throughout), followed by archives at the bottom. Still, I liked the concept of the fire inside the water and I drew it in my ipad before I photoshopped it to make it look better.

9. Word Bird (2014, I think)

At this point, my blog was all about a list of things that happened in my life, hence the words in the picture. I did realise it was grammatically incorrect, but it was troublesome to change it. I was ambitious with that bird because I wanted to "draw" it using only words, so you can see the the word "wing" is on its wing. The word "body" was supposed to be the body, "beak" the beak, "leg" for each legs, and so on. But it didn't really work, so I added a lot of filters and gave it a silhouette. You might notice that I didn't even bother to change the layout's background, except for the colour of it.

10. Upduck (2015, first 1/3)

You would've probably noticed that the duck in the picture is made up of my initials: SL. I was brainstorming for a logo for my personal branding in the future and I created this. 'Upduck' simply means a duck that is going up. It was a ridiculously simple layout with no background and not much colours, which is why it lasted so long. It was hard for me to get sick of it. I only changed it when I started feeling like the duck looks decapitated, so I changed to a black one with a complete head, which I got sick of immediately but never got around to changing it.

Today, I've changed it again. The current one is suppose to symbolise one of my intentions: To blaze a path calmly and harmlessly like a duck. It's also meant to express my liking of fire and water and red and blue and putting them together. I get the feeling that this layout won't last. We'll see.

[Update] That layout lasted a week. [/Update]