Kelley’s sheep-theme turned out to be the perfect choice for her - even though it was difficult for me to see at first. Kelley already had a good idea of what she wanted as far as visuals and functionality, so integrating her ideas into the theme went pretty smoothly.

Here is the front and back of her business card, which has many, rich design elements:

Firstly, we pulled her green, blue, and orange into the theme, and replaced the black with a rich, chocolate brown. Then, we added her logo, and the “energy” symbol she uses on the back of her card as the main design elements. These elements, along with her tag lines, make up the main header of the site, as well as a custom icon that will precede each post title.

For the large navigation image (to replace the sheep), Kelley thought she wanted something “fresh and clean” like green grass; but then I turned her on to istockphoto.com.

Oops, I forgot to warn her of how addicting that site can be. I have found myself completely re-designing a site based on an image I “just had to use” from there. So be warned. Once at istock, Kelley realized she needed something more relevant to who she was as a professional, and opted, instead, on the magazine image you see below.

There is still much work to be done, but here is the site with the main custom design elements in place:

Before:

After:

Now, we move on to building pages, customizing the sidebar, and incorporating any additional functionality using widgets and plugins…