Not sure I'm happy with the 'Victoria' bit yet, but here's my start: P.S. I see now it should be LIFE not live - my apologies. As far as design goes, you can see the concept. Best of luck with your forum, whatever you choose!
zinnidoll, like the text/font but I'm favouring a design with a transparent background so it will blend with the site. dcstudio not bad but the font for victoria looks too chunky and a little jagged. rule#1 looking for something that will blend with the background (there's a couple of sites mentioned on the thread which give examples of what I'm looking for)
Competition will finish tomorrow. Like suke's, zinnidoll's and a couple of entries received by PM, however, at the moment, I'm leaning towards darike's entries as they work really well on the page.
another entry from me.. the banner with transparent bakground : preview on your website : hope you'll like it..
Competition now over. Winner is darike (with IamGDS coming a really close second). Thanks to everyone who entered, some good designs to choose from.