Mother's Day is around the corner, instead of giving her the usual flowers or candy, why not make something for her instead? If you are not the crafty type, you can print out a digital print and frame it for a gift that lasts forever. Here are some ideas to get you going. These 1 inch circles would make great magnets or key chains. ![]() If making something is not your thing, I have plenty of digital art prints as well, just download, print and frame. Then there are other great Etsy sellers out there. I love items with a sense of humor. So no matter what type of mom you have, there are plenty of handmade options out there for you to choose from! Remember when you shop on Etsy you also support small business.
0 Comments
When doing any kind of design fonts can really tell a story without using any words. I am a font addict, so I have fonts for all kinds of occasions. What is great is a simple word in the right font can evoke an emotion and you can get many of these fonts for free. Take these fonts above. It is the same word, but most of the fonts do not fit well except the second one ( it is one of my favorites that I use in my designs ). It evokes that playful, fun feeling. The first font is great for a more formal design, the third would be great for something not too serious, but not formal, and the final font is more for a grunge, rough design. Here is an example of combining fonts. When combining fonts you want them to complement each other. In this case, the Are stands out not just because of the color, but the style automatically puts emphasis on that word. The overall look is fun and lighthearted all do the font style. It is best just to play around with the fonts that are out there, and experiment with what works together. Not sure where to find fonts? Here is a list of my favorites, just make sure they include a commercial license if you are going to sell any designs.
Visit these sites and have some fun with it!
Dawn If you have never heard of IFTT then run over to the site today. It really is one of the coolest tools you can use to save time for your social media posts. It is free, which is a bonus, and it is great for your business as well. It can be a little confusing, so this will be a quick run down on how it all works.
Basically, it does what is says. IF you tell the site to do something, THEN it will do that for you. How does this save time? For example, if you want to post across a variety of social media sites but find that it is time consuming, ( which it can be), then you would tell the site IF you post to Instagram, THEN post to your Facebook page, your Tumblr page, etc. all at the same time! To get started, create a free account , which is a simple walk through. Now, where it gets a little tricky, is you have to FIRST connect your accounts you use. Go to the search tool and look for services such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook page and Facebook group, etc. You will add each account one at a time. Once you have added them, check under your account name in the upper right hand corner, and you should see the accounts all there. Now what I do not like, is they call the IF/THEN part an Applet, kinda an odd name, but the service works. Now you can go to Discover, and it will recommend Applets for you, personally, I like to just go under my account and hit new Applet. Tap on the word This, and a bunch of icons will appear. Let's pick Instagram, you will then have a variety of choices you can use ( remember this is the IF THIS part ), so if you pick any new photo by you option, you then go to the THEN THAT screen. Now pick WHERE that trigger should go to, let's pick Facebook page. You can then choose what you want that action to be. Let's pick create a link post. Now you will be prompted to add an "ingredient" , yes, odd choice of words with these folks. I just use caption. You can then add a message, like "Check this out" or "Isn't this cool" etc. When you are done hit create action. You then get a summary of what will happen, in this case IF you post a photo on Instagram, THEN a post will appear on your connected Facebook page. Hit finish and you are set! If you do not like the action, you can always shut it off. That is basics! You can really have a fun time playing around with this. You can also find cool actions for your personal life. I have found it really saves time on social media sites that I want to use, but do not want to devote much time to like Tumblr and Twitter, I can have items sent right to those from my Facebook page. Enjoy! Dawn Once you get your Etsy shop up and running with good SEO and pictures, I advise you to start a Facebook page, use your Etsy shop name and you can get your cover photo right from Canva. Make sure it matches the cover photo from your shop for brand consistency. I also suggest using Pinterest, these are my two largest traffic sources. Yes, there is Instagram and Twitter, and Tumblr, but I would focus on these two first. Folks also advise having a Facebook group page, honestly, I have one, but do not have a lot of success on there. If you have the time go ahead and set that up as well. The difference between the two is basically the page is an all about your shop and the group is more interactive with the folks in it. I sometimes do sneek peeks and show off some custom orders on my group page, and I have gotten a few sales out of it.
Once you set up your Facebook page and Pinterest, go back to Etsy and add in those links on there so folks know you are there. I have a whole series of blog posts about Pinterest. These go into great detail on setting up a business account and how to set up your boards. This is so much easier to set up before you have a ton of listings going, other wise you have to go back and remember what you have promoted where, not a huge deal, but it is a pain. One of the best ways to streamline your time is to use a scheduler of some sort. Buffer is great, and you can schedule up to 10 Facebook posts for free. I love that I can automate these posts and not worry about them if life gets a little busy. I schedule Motivational Monday posts, Tips and Tricks Tuesday posts and one post only a week with a product. I get my Motivational Monday graphics from Canva. I create a bunch of them, and download them to my laptop in a folder. For tips and tricks, I go to Pinterest and look for things that may appeal to my target market. For me, I look for crafting tips, or planner ideas, or things to do with paper crafting. Pinterest saves can be scheduled as well and is covered in those blog posts. Another awesome tool is IFTT, If THIS than THAT. Basically you tell the program IF you do an action, than another action will occur. I want to go into that in another post. Set up your Facebook and Pinterest first, and we will cover that later. Dawn I know how it is, you have this freakin great awesome idea, you love it, you want to sell it, you rush all around, take some pics and throw it on Etsy, and nothing. You think it is cute, who else makes sculptures out of cotton swabs, right? What isn't to love? Well, before you go making all those little projects, you need to do a lot more work before you set up that shop, a whole lot more. I am going to give you some advice from all the crap I did wrong, and trust me, I have done a lot wrong, and I still am doing things wrong I am sure. But, maybe you can learn a little along the way. First, you need to decide who your target market is, who is going to buy that adorable cotton swab sculpture. Ok, let's make it real and decide you are going to sell jewelry ( a very saturated market). Target markets can be tricky to figure out, I am still struggling with it myself. There are some great resources out there, here is one of my favorites, she has a whole wealth of information out there to help with branding and your target market. I also love Brit & Co., you can sign up for free and get all kinds of awesome free classes sent right to your email. Now, decide how you want to represent your brand. Your brand is not just what you look like in your shop, but an extension of you. Again, head on over to the resources above and you will find a wealth of information on how to build a brand identity. Think of a famous business and the feelings that that company evokes. I like to think of Whole Foods. It is not just a grocery store, it is selling a shopping experience with their smells and food displays. You can see where your meat is coming from, what local suppliers are providing the cheese. You feel something when you shop there, it is not just another generic grocery store. You want to provide that unique experience in your shop. I am energetic, passionate, and fun loving, I love happy hours and having a good time. My brand should reflect those emotions in it. Those emotions can be expressed through your colors and fonts and your cover photo in your shop. I recommend that you go to Pinterest and create a secret board and fill it up with colors and fonts and photos that express who you are and how you want to show that off to the world. Take your time and go back and narrow it down to 4 or 5 colors and a few fonts. I saved those fonts and colors with my logo so I can refer back to them when I am creating posts. The color font on this blog is the pink that you see below. You should have a neutral color and complementary colors. My brand is fun, bright bold and whimsical. These colors and fonts reflect that feeling ( at least I hope so). Canva, which I mentioned in my previous post, has an awesome blog on designs and branding as well. You can find a wealth of free information here.
So, there are your first steps, decide who you are selling to, what you want to sell, and how you want to represent yourself to those folks to get them to buy from you. If you are not sure what is selling on Etsy, I suggest you go to the search bar and type in your idea, if it comes up, it has been recently searched for. I would also go to Pinterest and see what has been saved. Canva is the place to go when you have an Etsy shop. For FREE, you can design an awesome shop banner, icon, social media graphics and more. Yes, coming from someone who does graphics, it really is worth it. I often do the basic design or background in Canva, and then upload it in Photoshop and add my own font wording, but you can easily just use what Canva has to offer. Just go to the link above, and create a free account. Up top you will see the create a design menu, just click on what you want to use. Etsy shop banners are under the more button, then just scroll all the way down and you will see the Etsy shop cover photo template as well as the Etsy shop icon template, pretty cool huh? Just open up the cover template and you will see a bunch of options on the left to put in place. If it is free, there will be a little word free on the bottom of the graphic. Once you choose the design you like you can change the wording, the photo and the colors to whatever you want. If you want to change the working, just click on the word, above will be a drop down menu to change the font, the size, the color even the background colors. If you screw up, there is a nice little undo button at the top. If you want to upload your own photo to the cover, just head over to the left hand side and there is an upload button to upload your own image. You can just drag and crop that on the cover and resize it. Pretty cool? Now the best part! If you go to the home Canva page, on the left you will see something that says your brand. You can upload up to 3 of your brand colors in the free version. If you use Photoshop or any program where you can grab the color code ( it looks like #fe4e8e), you can make sure your exact brand color is saved. Now when you add text, you can choose that exact color from the drop down menu, you will see brand colors as an option. You can even play with filter options if you are using a photograph. This is really a fun, and very addiciting place to visit, and what is great, is you can make sure that all your social media graphics match ensuring that you will have a strong brand identity. So take a cold winter day and go have some fun! The other nice thing is you can go ahead while you have extra time and design all those social media graphics in an afternoon and save them until you want to use them. Dawn |
AuthorHello! I am Dawn and I am the owner and designer of Kool Cat Designs. I love to travel and the outdoors and of course making cool printable items for you! Archives
April 2017
Categories |