Zymic

When I make a 88x31 button I tend to get a cool textured background to work from. Below is a texture effect I created for this tutorial. Enlarge the image and when the larger main image loads save or copy it in to photoshop.

Now you should have my enlarged image in photoshop.

Select the "rectangular marquee tool" and at the top of the screen select fixed size from the style drop down box. Put in a width of 88 and a height of 31. This tells the marquee "man" to select a size of 88x31 when making a selection!

Now click any where on your image. This will make a selection of 88x31. Keep re-selecting different parts of the image until you think you have found a bit you like.

Now copy your selection and paste it in a new document with (your document should be 88x31 pixels in size).

Press CTRL + U and "check" "Colourize" and play around with colours until you find which colour you like best, I choose a light blue colour, as show below:

Make a new layer and grab the pencil tool and select white as your foreground colour.

With your pencil tool draw a line with a height of 7 pixels and as wide as your image:

Now we need to give the white bar a black border, select black as your foreground colour and with your pencil tool draw a 1px border above and below the white bar:

To make the bar blend in and look better we are going to change the layer opacity to around 41%. Your white bar should be faded now:

We need to put the text into the button, select the type tool and pick a font you like best, I used 04b_09 pixel font (get it or ones similar from dafont.com).

Now type in your site name into the middle of the white bar below! And lastly give your text a 1px stroke to get a result like mine.