Etsy Banner-o-rama!

I had an idea some weeks ago to offer to make a few banners for people on Etsy... just because you like to draw, sew, make jewellery etc doesn't necessarily mean that you want to sit for hours at your computer, trying to work out why you can't move the text around etc etc... If you have no idea of what a banner is, it's just a strip of graphics at the top of a web page, like a shop sign. It's an understatement to say that i'm no expert at fiddling with graphics, but I thought i'd improve my skills in using the impenetrable Gimp program (free software for editing photos and graphics) ... and here are the results!

This was the first... I used the photo from one of Babymoon's items for sale, and copied sections of it, rotated them and joined them together to form a long background. This was all my partner's idea! Then I added text, in roughly the same colour as the baby's head.


http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=28815


I used a similar technique for the next banner, where I copied sections of a photo of the artist's work and montaged them together into a long image... I did this because if you want to combine images and text you have to get them to work together in the space you have, that what i think anyway! :)

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5393511

Little Pods supplied the lovely picture for the banner below, I just added text. It was quite difficult to get just the right colours that would stand out from the fantastic pea-pods background!


http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5532271

Alyssa supplied a fantastic close-up picture of jewellery, and she didn't want to hide it too much with the text. So, she asked for the centre to be faded-out so the text would show up better... I managed to muddle through and find a way as you can see, and I'll be including how I did it in a future tutorial, so watch this space!


http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5202337

I really enjoyed doing the banner for Shellydelight's shop... I tinkered with a couple of images of things in her shop and used the layers function in the Gimp to compile an image, then added text. Oh, I should say that I also used Irfanview (another free photo-editing program) to resize the pictures... there may be an easier way using the Gimp, but I stuck to what I was familiar with... where there's a will, there's a way! :D


http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5294807

For The Pin Cushion's shop, I took the pictures! Two of the results are below. I laid a piece of green felt onto a cushion, then stuck pins in it and took the photos on an upstairs window-sill for maximum natural light.. which is what I always do when I take photos of the things I make to go in my Etsy shop. The picture I used for the banner immediately below was taken with the macro function on my camera... most digital cameras these days have this facility, so if you've never used it, read your camera's instruction manual! Or if you've lost the book, the macro function may be indicated with an icon of a flower.


http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5514169

Again, I took the pictures for this banner, but you'll see that this 'panorama' is made up of 4 different photos (I used Irfanview's "panorama" function to do this... it's very useful!).


http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5514169

I really enjoyed making these banners (and my own! check out my shop http://joeysdreamgarden.etsy.com/ to see it), and making your own banner is not as difficult as you think... when you know what you're doing! I've used a few different tutorials, but me being me, not very technical but a bit of a perfectionist, I would like to see a tutorial which goes through every single step in a super-simple way, SO I will be posting a tutorial on how to make a simple Etsy banner using the Gimp free program soon, so keep watching! :D

Meanwhile, if you want to have a go yourself, here are the links to the programs I used:
The Gimp: http://www.gimp.org/
Irfanview: http://www.irfanview.com/

But if it starts to stress you out, wait for my tutorial!

Good night!