Check out Absolute Backgrounds for a great site with a fully customized program to create your own backgrounds or borders. You can choose from a variety of colors, textures and gradients or upload your own background and change it. The combinations are endless.

There are two ways to put a background on your page. If you are putting a color in, the code is simply bgcolor="red". Refer to the color chart for the html codes for colors. If you are putting in a background image or picture, the code is background="http://image from your browser"

Make sure that your text is clear over your background.