• How to Create an Etsy Banner or Facebook Cover Photo {Plus Free Clipart}

    *Giveaway* – Comment on this blog post for a chance to win a commercial {unlimited use} license to one of my premium pieces of illustrated clipart {choose from any one of these in my shop; Etsy banners excluded}. The winner will be announced/contacted on October 2nd! An integral part of starting a new business orContinue…

    How to Create an Etsy Banner or Facebook Cover Photo | The Postman's Knock
    *Giveaway* – Comment on this blog post for a chance to win a commercial {unlimited use} license to one of my premium pieces of illustrated clipart {choose from any one of these in my shop; Etsy banners excluded}. The winner will be announced/contacted on October 2nd!

    An integral part of starting a new business or organization is image. The more put-together you look, the more people are going to respect your product or mission. This blog post is dedicated to walking you through how to create a good Etsy banner and/or Facebook cover photo to represent your entity. We’ll start by discussing Etsy banners.

    For a long time, I sold banners on Etsy for fellow sellers who wanted a banner that reflected their personalities or product. Through working with these clients, I realized that many of them were limited by simply not understanding where to start in creating an Etsy banner.

    The first, and most important, thing to remember when creating an Etsy banner is this: Etsy banner dimensions are 760 pixels by 100 pixels. That’s a long, skinny horizontal rectangle.

    It’s going to be a bit easier to create your Etsy banner if you have a program like Photoshop {not free} or paint.net {free, but not compatible with Macs}. You can, however, download a free trial version of Photoshop.

    I apologize in advance for this being a Mac-centric post. I am not super-familiar with working with PCs. If you’re a PC person, accept my apologies with some free, hand-drawn clipart {perfect for banner making} at the bottom of this post!

    This post is divided into two sections: one for those who are not in the least bit familiar with Photoshop, and one for those who are somewhat familiar to fluent in Photoshop.

    Creating an Etsy Banner: If You are Not Familiar with Photoshop

    It’s not as hard as you think to make a banner. If you have Microsoft Word {or a program like Open Office}, you can piece together a good banner using your word processing program. I will be using Word today — here you can see the simple chevron background with a text overlay {the font is “Angel Tears” [please note this font requires a license for commercial use]} that I have created:

    How to Create an Etsy Banner or Facebook Cover Photo | The Postman's Knock

    I dragged the chevron background into the document and formatted the image to appear behind the text {right click the image, click “Format Picture”, and choose the orientation “Behind Text”}.

    Be sure you are zoomed to 200%. My font size is 48, but the size of your font will vary by the type of your font.

    How to Create an Etsy Banner or Facebook Cover Photo | The Postman's Knock

    Now it’s time to make a screenshot of your banner! If you have a Mac, push Option + Shift + 4. The screen shot plus sign will show up, and as you drag the cursor, numbers will appear and change as you drag farther {refer to the orange arrow on the following image}.

    How to Create an Etsy Banner or Facebook Cover Photo | The Postman's Knock

    You want to drag the cursor until the numbers say 760 and 100. These are the dimensions of an Etsy banner {760 pixels wide by 100 pixels tall}. You will probably need to play around to get your banner how you want it. In the end, here was my result:

    How to Create an Etsy Banner or Facebook Cover Photo | The Postman's Knock

    The banner I created is simple, clean, and effective, and only took five minutes to create. It would be even easier to take a screenshot of a photo from an imaging program.

    Creating an Etsy Banner: If You are Familiar with Photoshop

    Admittedly, having proficiency in Photoshop allows you to create a more visually complex banner, and you have more control over exactly what goes where.

    You will open a new 760 x 100 document, RGB color, and 300-350 dpi. For my banners, I usually begin with a solid background and use a texture brush to add some distress/light/visual interest. To find brushes like these, you can search sites like Brusheezy for “grunge brushes”.

    To create the background on the banner below, I started with a solid robin’s egg blue background, then layered on a grunge brush in white at low opacity. Next, I added layers of text and hand-drawn elements.

    How to Create an Etsy Banner or Facebook Cover Photo | The Postman's Knock

    I did the same for this banner:

    How to Create an Etsy Banner or Facebook Cover Photo | The Postman's Knock

    As long as you have a scanner, hand-drawn elements are easy with Photoshop. You’ll draw the element/clipart you want to use, scan it into the computer, export the image into Photoshop, and use the magic eraser tool to erase the background. Remember, there’s some helpful clipart at the end of this blog post that you are welcome to use for your banner/s.

    Once you’re satisfied with your banner, save it as a .png {.png tends to be higher-resolution/better quality than .jpg}, upload it to Etsy {go to Your Shop > Info and Appearance} and you’re in business!

    Creating a Facebook Cover Photo: If You are Not Familiar with Photoshop

    The dimensions of a Facebook cover photo are 851 pixels x 315 pixels. The advantage of creating a Facebook cover photo versus an Etsy banner is you can drag and adjust the Facebook cover photo to choose what you want to show as your banner, provided your image is larger than 851 x 315. That gives you some wiggle room and freedom!

    Your Facebook cover photo should reflect what it is that your business or organization does/has to offer. For example, the cover photo that I created for The Postman’s Knock Facebook page features the bluebird hand-drawn clipart that’s for sale in my store, plus curtains that were also hand-drawn. The overall pleasing, artistic but unusual aesthetic reflects the “vibe” of my business – and also matches my Etsy banner to create a cohesive look:

    How to Create an Etsy Banner or Facebook Cover Photo | The Postman's Knock

    Again, you have more freedom with your Facebook cover photo, and it doesn’t have to be as serious/permanent as your Etsy banner. Effectively, you can play around and add all sorts of graphics, whether you are Photoshop fluent or not. For example, you can generate a word cloud using a site like Wordle. This word cloud can feature adjectives or nouns that are relevant to your business/organization.

    If you offer a product, you could create a cover photo that features a good photo of your product/s. If you have an organization, post photos of volunteers or activities your organization participates in or is known/would like to be known for. For example, let’s say you’re a non-profit sponsoring a marathon. I would suggest you procure a photo of marathon runners and feature it as your cover photo.

    If you would like a more organized-looking banner that features a marriage of text, background, and photos, you can employ the same technique explained above for creating an Etsy banner sans Photoshop. Open a word processing program, import a graphic in, format the graphic to be behind the text, and put text on the graphic. Then take a screen shot that is 851 x 315.

    Creating a Facebook Cover Photo: If You are Familiar with Photoshop

    Create a new document that is 851 x 315. 300-350 dpi, RGB color. You can employ the same techniques as explained for creating an Etsy banner using Photoshop – start with a solid layer, add some texture, then layers of photo and text!

    Try to make sure the important information on your Etsy banner is concentrated in the center or the right, where the profile photo won’t obstruct the view. If you are featuring individual photos within the banner, consider putting frame around them, such as these hand-drawn pencil frames, or simply thick, solid frames {these can be created by creating a square or rectangle behind the photo}.

    Things to Remember

    Sometimes beginning entrepreneurs or organizations are not familiar with copyright laws. If you want your graphics to be completely legitimate and useable {which is something you should want unless you love being contacted by lawyers}, be sure and either purchase your graphics or download them for free from reliable sources. You never know who might come across your banner and recognize illegal use of their graphic in there.

    stock.xchng is a good, free alternative to websites like istock photo. You can find professional-quality photos on stock.xchng that are free for use. Don’t assume that every photo can be used for what you want to use it for, though – read through the licensing information before you download the image.

    My personal preference for clipart is … well, non-clipart-looking clipart. I like graphics that were hand-drawn. A great resource for this is Etsy. You can also use Google Image search, but double-check usage privileges before you download the graphic. I offer a few hand-drawn clipart images in my own Etsy shop.

    Also remember … you don’t need to have a complicated banner or cover photo. Sometimes less is more! I enjoy a background with some nice text more than I like a lot of fluff.

    I hope this post has given you some insight into creating your own banner or cover photo! I also hope that the following hand-drawn {and, yes, lip-kissed} clip art will spark some inspiration. Feel free to use it in your own Etsy banner or Facebook cover photo! Just, please, do not re-sell or re-distribute the clip art. I really appreciate that you are here reading my blog today, and this is my gift to you to help you in your design ventures!

    Free Clipart | The Postman's Knock

    Click this hyperlink to download the .zip file containing the clip art: Hand-Drawn Clipart by the Postman’s Knock. All files are backgroundless .pngs.

    If you have any questions, input, or observations about creating an Etsy banner or a Facebook cover photo, please don’t hesitate to comment! One commenter will win a commercial license to the clipart of their choice from my store. The drawing ends on Wednesday, October 2nd at 5:00 PM Mountain Time, which is when I will notify the winner.

    Thank you for reading!