To fade a blog on paint its very simple. . . YOU CANT!!!lol!!! But i'll teach you the closest thing to it. To fake fade a blog follow this

To customize a color for your layout click the base color of the color that you want (example: If you have pink and you wanted a lighter pink you would pick a pink from the color toolbar and you would click it twice) and you should see a pop-up full of diffrent colors (it should've automatically have selected the same color pink that u picked) then click define custom colors and move the scrollbar thingie to the point where you see the color you want in the changing station. Then click add to custom colors then click ok then your color should be in the same square where the base color was (even though it shows that it was already selected you might wanna click it again to make sure because sometimes it will remain the same as the base color.)
and make a lighter color, like a really light color. You can change the color as light as you want but here's an example of what i did. . .

and here's another example

See? closest thing to it!!!

By the way if you like either 1 of these ugly layouts let me know and i'll give ya the code