My Etsy Banner

A while back I blogged about tutorials on blog and Etsy banners and headers. Yesterday I finally took a few minutes to work on one. It's not the best in the world, but it didn't take a really long time either. I suspect that it will be like my business cards, which have a photo that changes all the time.

The background is from one of the sunset photos that I took last week. I solarized it so that the colors were more green. You can still see the electrical lines that ran across one side of the page. I guess I could have taken them out but I don't mind them. The rest is the picture from my avatar and basic brushes and text from photoshop elements.

Click to view the banner at Essential Adornment, my Etsy store.

Next up, the blog header.

Tutorial Monday-Etsy and Blog Banners

Today Tutorial Monday is a little different. Instead of a jewelry tutorial I'm sharing the the best of the banner tutorials I've found on the web. I've been kicking around ideas for my blog banner/header and my Etsy shop banner but haven't been sure how to go about creating one. I want a picture or two of my jewelry with the name of my blog. I also want something similar for my Etsy shop.

So far my favorite comes from Etsy Labs: Skill Share: Making A Banner. One of the reasons I like this tutorial is that it uses Photoshop and the directions are applicable to Photoshop Elements. I have Elements. I've taken a couple of courses in Photoshop Elements, but I don't always remember the facets of the program that I don't use often. Danielle goes over the steps and illustrates the process with some screen shots.

Brenda Smith of Serendipity Patchwork and Quilting has a good tutorial How to Create a Blog Banner, and well as one on Blog Buttons. Oh, and be sure to check out her blog.

Carole Casper has a tutorial for Blogger banners as well. Creating a Personal Header in New Blogger is a PDF file that you can download and print out for handy reference. She has other tutorials on creating a favicon, making links, and fabric art related tutorials on her blog A Stitch in Time.

Gabrielle Blair has a tutorial by Guest Mom Amy on Making a Blog Banner.

Paul Stamatiou has tutorial on HOW TO: Make a Blog Header Graphic.

You can get free graphics for your Wordpress header at Ten Free Cutline Header Images on Skitzo. For more on the Cutline Theme for Word Press see Chris Pearson. Captain Hops also has free graphics for Cutline.

More free graphics can be found at Blog Headers For Free Download. There are some very creative graphics here. All of the header graphics in this post came from here. Check it out.






Maybe you don't want to do it yourself. There are a number of people who will do blog and etsy banners, as well as website banners, for very reasonable fees. Here are some I've found:

Etsy Banners and Graphics by Jelene

Many of her banners have a colorful pop art style, but she also does some very close to what I had in mine for my banner. She has lots of examples to view. You can also buy through her Etsy shop Jelene's Pop Shop.

Callista's Graphic Design Studio

I really like the look of her work and she also does website and blog headers.