Update on the shop, and helpful resources!

Just in case you haven't seen it, I created another (yes, *another*) new banner for my etsy shop! I love the new look, and it is definitely a lot cleaner and easier to read than before. To tell you the truth, I didn't realize you could upload banners and avatars that were larger than the specified size that they show at! Using a larger image than what displays makes the image much clearer and it loses that grain that will appear when it is distorted or stretched in any way. (hope it makes sense if you're not too clear on what I'm talking about!)

Anywho, I created my old banner using Scrapblog, which is a really fun site to play around on if you've got the time! It's online scrapbooking with TONS of awesome graphics and tools on there to use.. I made a blog post about it last fall with some pages I made! (If you go make anything, please share with us here so I can go check out your creations!)

Here's my banner line, starting with what I started with last week, and what I ended up with by the weekend! :) The ones after the original green one were made purely using Picasa - my FAVORITE easy-editing photo program. It allows you to organize your photos by albums, date taken, number of people in them, etc; also lets you do a ton of editing and even add text! Great find, and if you haven't seen it, I strongly suggest you try it out!





I like the dotty banner too, and may go back to that one when I get tired of this collaged yellow one.. but I liked the drop shadow I made (there's no tool for it, so I did it by layering the text) and I thought the pictures in the background was pretty neat. I'd want to change the dots on the second-to-last one if I were to use that in my shop - the text is a little hard to read when it's sized larger!

Once you're done cropping your banner and everything in etsy, I use Irfanview to resize the banner so it's not 300,000x1,000,000 pixels big (haha.. not really that big!), but you get the "picture". Irfanview is easy to use once you get a hang of it, and it's the best program I've found to resize/crop images quickly.


Of course, all of these programs (and website - scrapblog requires no download!) are free and useful for your image editing/organizing/creating needs. Hope you can use some of this information!

Project Wonderful / Animated Graphic Tutorial

Today I wanted to share with you my newly found love of Project Wonderful.
It's great!
You can post ads on blogs and websites that have this gadget installed on them for little to no cost. Right on! I've got my hands on quite a few free ad spots.. it tells you tons of stats about the sites listed, too! It lets you know what size ad is allowed, whether they allow animations or not, how many views they average per day (and how many they've had that day), the lowest current adspace available, and the average cost of running an ad on that site.
Lots of fun information.. but you have to just go on in and look around to see for yourself!

So I found a great program that you can try free for 30 days (and you DON'T have to fill out that form on the landing page.. just click 'Continue'). It is Jasc Animation Pro, and you can find the demo HERE.
Once you've got the program installed and opened up, there there is the 'Animation Wizard' button in the top left corner. Click that, and it will walk you through collecting your pictures and everything.


Here, you can adjust the size (in pixels) of your ad. Let's do a 125x125 square ad.


So find your Etsy (or other online shop's) product pictures
Add your text
Play with the timing (by highlighting all of your frames, right clicking, and selecting "Frame Properties". Higher numbers will mean a slower ad)

..And you've got your own ad!



How easy was that?!

I've made quite a few of them now, including little buttons, half-banners, and non-animated ones. I'll get a good hang on it later, but I've been playing for a few days now. Love this program, though! May have to find a copy of it once the trial expires.. it's really nice to have!