So, who are you people?

We are the creators of and contributors to Home on the Fringe, aka John and Kristen.  John is a professional photographer.  Kristen is a corporate grunt whose jobs have included duties which led her to discover the wonders of Photoshop.  Using John’s massive photo archives and Kristen’s basic design knowledge, we create blog banners to help people spruce up their sites.

What is Fringelements (and how do you pronounce it)?

Fringelements is just the name of our blog banner business.  When we started Home on the Fringe using a standard Blogger template, Kristen wasn’t satisfied with the plain solid-colored banner, so she started playing around with some of John’s images.  After being approached about help with a new banner from some blogging friends and family, we put this site together to showcase some samples of our work and provide more concrete information about what we offer. 

(Oh, and it’s pronounced “fringe-elements”.  Get it?  We’re from Home on the FRINGE, we create banners using certain photographic and design ELEMENTS?  Ah…)

How does this all work?

Well, you’ll e-mail us and tell us you want a banner.  If we aren't already familiar with your blog, we’ll ask you what you consider to be the basic “theme” or “feel” of your site, your intended audience, your interests, and other general questions.  We'll also ask for any specific requirements you may have in terms of artistic or photographic elements.

You’ll either tell us you want a banner using pink and green and somehow involving a buffalo, or you’ll say you have no idea what you want, but you know you need something and you think maybe it should be edgy or peaceful or that it should definitely involve cheese.  Whatever the input, we’ll take it, create three distinct drafts, and send them to you for edits or approval.  Ultimately, you’ll either choose one or pay an additional fee to purchase all three and have for future banner rotations.

How much does it cost?

You’ll pay $40 (preferably via PayPal) to initiate our creating your three drafts.  If, after viewing all three, you decide you want to use all of them, you’ll pay an additional $35 and will have all three images to rotate on your blog at your leisure.  If you decide you just want one, we’ll make any final edits and send you the final version for you to upload for use on your site.

What DON’T you do?

The banners we create are meant to spruce up a blog, regardless of the template being used.  We don’t overhaul websites.  We can give you basic tips on getting the code into your template for your banner to show, but beyond that, we’re pretty useless when it comes to html.  Believe me, you wouldn’t want us playing with your template – it could be disastrous. 

What do these things look like, anyway?

Well, for starters, the top of this page has a banner we created, as does Home on the Fringe (where you can also see more of John’s photography in the left column).  Below are even more samples of our banner work.

To get started, contact us at
kristenandjohn@homeonthefringe.com.