Dear llembas,
I do hope you're having a most spectacular holiday! After a whole month of toil (not really), I have a Brian-centric layout to present to you!
And now, because Livejournal is a mess of confusing stuff, here's detailed steps on getting the layout for your journal.
1. Go to the photohosting site of your choice and upload the pic included that's labeled 'layout'. Make sure you have the URL to the picture handy.
2. Go to the Livejournal site. Go to MANAGE > CUSTOMIZE.
3. This will bring you to a page where you can choose the style system. From the drop-down menu, choose OLD SYSTEM (S1) and click CHANGE. When the page loads again, click on the MODIFY JOURNAL link that has now appeared under the drop-down menu.
4. We now have the page where all the magic happens. Under the heading color theme, you can set your journal colors however you want. For the way I set it up, I used these values:
Color Scheme
Those were the colors that I chose, but you can adjust them however.
5. Now, scroll down into the overrides section and copy everything from this page and paste it into the box. Scroll through the override box again and find the large caps that says, 'THE URL OF YOUR IMAGE GOES HERE'. Follow that command instruction and replace it with the url from wherever you uploaded it before. Click SAVE CHANGES.
6. Voila, done! It should look like this now.
If anything turned out wonky or is not to your wishes, feel free to email me (now that you know who I am!) at thediane@livejournal.com :D Happy Holidays!