I’ve completed my photoshop mockup of the redesign of my blog and am pretty happy with the look - it may not be the most modern trendy design, but it matches what I want. The thing is due to some of the design elements overlapping other elements I’m not sure where to set my slices.

essentially what is the best practice to ensure everything fits together once it’s done.?

also I used a pattern to fill the back of the photoshop document. it’s very subtle and I’m not sure where to slice it so that it will tile properly across the background of my site. I chose one of the default patterns in photoshop and set the scale to 23% and blend to dissolve.

I don’t believe there are any hard and fast rules when it comes to applying background images in css.
A suggestion: pick apart some of the designs of the Zen Garden using the Firefox web developer toolbar which has an option “view image information” which gives you a list of the images used in the design. This can be highly instructional

Thanks e-man, I’ll check that out.

Sometimes slicing/dicing doesn’t work, for those occasions and where you want/need a liquid layout there is layering (z-index: 10;).
I’m using three layers in the attached. Expand/contract your browser window and you might notice how they slide over each other (Site).
1) TopBar Shadow
2) Logo
3) Angled Stripes
Edit-Add: These sit between the background and content layers.
The content is on layers above these.

I tend to use this technique a lot, have for years.

PXLated,
that looks great and is something I’m going to want to try out in the future.