If you are looking to make a WindowsBlinds skin, SkinStudio is a wonderful program put out by Stardock that makes the skinning process easier. I'd recommend sifting through that program or reading up on it. As far as making gadgets, widgets, and the like...I find that complicated when I try, ha. So I'm sure I'll keep an eye on this post for some intro pointers myself

The Wiki tutorials and forums - help with the piecing together the bits that make up a skin

Design comes from within - the only guidelines for how your skin should look is your concept

Photoshop or other can be used - design your skin in your program, then slice the design into pieces, then put the pieces together in skin studio

dowload some skins, open in skin studio - see how they were put together

decent skins can take 40+hrs of your time, even when you know what you're doing




those are put together in DesktopX - design is up to you - depending on what you want to make, you may have to learn some scripting if you don't know some already

import one in desktopx builder mode - see how it was put together