My Updated Etsy Banner

I've been trying to update the look of my etsy shop. But I no longer have Photoshop, so I'm working with Picasa, SerifPlus 6.0(a free photo editing download) and Microsoft Word.

I have finally perfected using the 3 to make what I think is a presentable banner. By using word, I inserted my photos on the page where I want them. In Microsoft Office 2007, I can edit the photos in a variety of shapes and outlines. I especially like the rounded corners I gave each photo. Then I made a text box with my name. With the text box, I can change the background color, text color, etc. I arranged everything the way I wanted it in the word document. Took a screen shot, pasted it into serifplus6.0. I then cropped the photo for just the banner, exported it to a jpg. And uploaded it into my shop.

I made it sound easy, but it was a lot of putzing around trying to get the photos to line up correctly and the number of pixels to match what etsy wanted. But since we still have limited internet access, I could spend what time I wanted on this.

I think it turned out ok for using limiting programs.

Later everyone!!

I needed a new avatar!

As part of my refocusing on my Etsy shop: www.rockcreekcreations.etsy.com, I've been signing up for a variety of different websites. Most of these sites require placing the scrip on your webpage and then allows others to advertise on your blog. Up until now, I've been using one of my brooches. Not always the same one, just anyone that I choose at the time.

So I've decided that I need to have an avatar that I use on the etsy.com forums, on Indiego, on entrecard and any other place I decide to make my presence. BUT my old computer died so I no longer have photoshop. (I'm not the most organized so I could no longer find the disk and key code. It was a really old version, so I maybe should update someday.)

First I went into picasa, the photo editing software from google.com. I picked out 9 photos of my bookmarks and brooches that I really like. Then I made these into a 3 x 3 collage. If you have never played with the collage option from picasa it is really fun. But I wanted to put my name on the photo.

So what does a person do? I was just about to put up a post on the forums at etsy about a website to edit photos on, but someone beat me to it. That post recommended www.lunapic.com to edit your photos. So I decided to try it. Let me tell you it's no photoshop, but it's not bad for what I needed to do. I could resize my collage to the pixels I needed, and I could pick from a bunch of different fonts to type my name on the photo. I then was able to save the photo to my computer. Not Bad!

So here is the image I decided to use for my avatar and web presence.