make your own facebook timeline cover

While Facebook does not offer the large timeline cover image for pages, you can certainly deck out your profile if you have a little Photoshop knowledge.

Recently I saw a design site offering templates for $40. Ahem. Here's a very simplistic way for you to begin making your own and saving your dough (if you have Photoshop).

Here's the short version of how I did mine. It's short because I'm going out on a limb to think you might have a little knowledge and I don't have much time. When I have more time, I'll give a step-by-step.

• Start with a canvas sized 851 pixels x 315 pixels.
• Fill in with a solid background color.
• Use brushes to create a flourish (mine are hearts in the top left and bottom right). My brush is part of a package called My Heart Brushes by ~mcbadshoes. It's a free download and you can get it here. After installing the brush in Photoshop I was able to use it. I added a drop shadow to each flourish. I performed a Free Transform on the upper left flourish to turn it around.
• For the images, I opened the ones I wanted to include, reduced their size, and drag-and-dropped them onto the canvas. 
• For the framed image, I used the Custom Shape Tool and chose Frame 7. I kept the color of the frame the same as the quote text and added Outer Glow.
• As a placeholder for my Facebook profile pic, I added a white box and applied the same frame style around it. The profile pic appears 2 cm off the left and extends approximately 10 cm up into the canvas. The box should be about 10 cm x 15 cm. 

Photoshop 7.0 screen-shot

Inserted into Facebook

Will this help you generate some ideas? I'll hope to have more of a tutorial later. To help me know if that's necessary, I'd love to hear from you! Please feel free to leave a comment. And don't go spending $40 for someone to create one for you.