Heather Waterman gets huge kudos for the work she's done on the "skin" of my blog (aka Masterpage).  She went out of her way to identify an ugly looking blog and give it life :).  While you shouldn't judge a blog by it's theme, I think a lot of us do that.  So I really do appreciate the make over.

I didn't want to take any credit for the great work she's done.  One thing I'm not is a designer.  One thing you might be interested in was the behind the scenes process.

1.  First Heather asked me to identify which wordpress or typepad blog themes I liked and to describe what I was looking for in a look. - I answer with I wanted something that reflected my personality, but at the same time had all the columns I was use to, and was still somewhat identifiable as a SharePoint blog.  I was looking for a chrome look.  I sent her a couple of styles that I liked.

2. She asked me for some profile type images and put up a prototype on a separate site where I could see how it would look. 

3. Then she worked and made changes based on the feedback until we were on the same page.

4. She then was given permissions on my blog to create a web part page where she added the various styles to the page on my site.

5. After the thumb up, She then flipped it from that page to my default page and it went live.

Let me summarize this even more what happened.

1. Gather requirements

2. Build a prototype in a proof of concept POC environment separate from production

3. Adjust as appropriate - back and forth multiple iterations.

4. Verify and Integrate step by step to verify

5. Go/No Go and verify it still works as expected.

Where can you find samples masterpages if you wanted them? 

Download Center: 20 Sample Master Pages

Heather's Base Master Page File for SharePoint 2007

Paul Culmsee has out done himself: "Boy Bands: How to understand the Site Definition vs. Site Template Debate"

Codeplex: SharePoint Upload MasterPages and PageLayouts STSADM Command

You can provision masterpages and page layouts using features or SharePoint designer, but if they are already created and you haven't got SPD, how do you update them? STSADM Command to upload masterpages and pagelayouts to the Masterpage and Page Layouts Gallery.

Why don't we have a community around our masterpages and themes?

Apparently Pixelmill does make "Skins" for SharePoint.  I didn't know that until today!  They have 22 listed in SharePoint Skins in their product library. From what I can see there are a handful of different people that have them listed here.  I have to assume that you could host your custom masterpages and make money. Pretty cool.  For $150.00 or there abouts you can have a decent looking theme or masterpage in a quick download.