Dear llembas, 
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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! 
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And now, because Livejournal is a mess of confusing stuff, here's detailed steps on getting the layout for your journal.
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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. 
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2. Go to the Livejournal site. Go to MANAGE > CUSTOMIZE.
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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.
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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: <br>
<center><a href="colors.png" target="_blank">Color Scheme</a></center>
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Those were the colors that I chose, but you can adjust them however. 
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5. Now, scroll down into the overrides section and copy everything from <a href="overrides.txt" target="_blank">this page</a> 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 <strike>command</strike> instruction and replace it with the url from wherever you uploaded it before. Click SAVE CHANGES.
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6. Voila, done! It should look like <a href="sample.png" target="_blank">this</a> now. 
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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!