blog makeover

I had these grand ideas to give the blog a wonderful facelift and makeover during Christmas Break. I had an idea of how I wanted it to look. I love reading other people's blogs and seeing how their blog reflects their personality. I wanted that! I searched for blog backgrounds, but didn't find one that captured exactly what I wanted. I found a program called Artisteer that lets you design your own blog backgrounds and banners without having to know HTML code. I created a design I really liked and it worked wonderfully, until I went to export it to blogspot, then it displayed with the word "TRIAL" all over it because I had used the trial version. I even considered switching blogging sites to see if that gave me more options. In the end, I've only ended up really frustrated and with a blog that works, but is so far from what I want it to be. If anyone has ideas, suggestions, comments, I'd really appreciate it.