Etsy Banners - More Plans and Thoughts (from my blog)

I'm sharing with you something I just posted on my blog tonight.
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After I made my first banner for my Etsy shop, and posted here about how and why I used PowerPoint to do so, I found I had made an annoying mistake. I saved the PowerPoint banner as a .jpg file - that was all right. However, I forgot to save the PowerPoint file as it was originally developed in the program. Now I have to go back in and re-do it all from scratch, and save it once more, as a .pub file.

The reason I want this "template" is because of some new plans I just made. I realized yesterday that it would be fun, as well as possibly profitable, to change those banners to reflect specific holidays and seasons.

For example, I'm definitely doing one for the year-end holidays. As soon as I can finish some Christmas and Hanukkah projects, I'll take photos and put them in my Shop. Then, I'll create a banner with those holiday items, and only those. When anyone lands at my store, they'll immediately be immersed in the holiday spirit.

I don't think I can complete enough new items for the Hallowe'en or Thanksgiving holidays quickly enough. But after the year-end banner, there are all kinds of possibilities. Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring; Baseball, Football; Weddings; Valentine's Day, Easter, Patriotic (Memorial Day, July 4, etc.). My mind is a-flurry with all the stuff I want to make just so I can put them in my banner (LOL).

Once I have my template, I only need to change background color and images.

I might even offer the template, simple and plain as it is, to others for their own shop and to enable them to have their own fun.

An Itsy Tip on Etsy Banner-Making

I realize that we have many talented and skilled team members who probably create and offer their designs for Etsy banners. However, there are some Etsy shop owners who might want to do their own, for any of a number of reasons.

I posted on my own blog tonight, about my first effort at my own Etsy banner. For over two years, I used a very nice professionally designed banner, but it did not show my shop items. I wanted that type of banner so badly.

For those two years, every time I tried to find a way to do it, the instructions all used Photoshop as the tool. I did not have it, I probably never will.

Today, however, I finally became frustrated enough to do some serious cyber-searching. One small link said that it could be done in PowerPoint. Well, I took that and ran with it. You can see my new banner here...

My post, about my experiences with it, and with PowerPoint 2003, my antiquated old version, is here:

http://prayersncrafts.blogspot.com/2011/08/making-etsy-banner-finally.html

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Hopefully, some of you will try your hand at banner-making, and will be even better at it than I am, whether with Photoshop or PowerPoint or another tool. Have fun and good luck.