A Shop Refresh

I'm definitely in a mood for refreshing things as of late.  Between working toward finishing the house and preparing to update my blog, I want to redesign everything.

I've been playing around with updating my Facebook cover photo for a while now.  In fact, I started a Canva account a few months ago.  However, I never took the time to finish it as I kept getting stuck design wise.  After working with Elissa a few weeks ago and using Canva to help make her blog header, I felt more confident and decided it was time to get back to my abandoned project so I spent that weekend playing with it.

First, I went back to the draft of my new HEH Facebook cover.  After a few layout revisions, I was ready to add photos.  Then, I changed the font of the text to a fun, somewhat bold font.  I added the "making 3D printed mouse ears since 2015" to the bottom- both for good measure and since I'm very proud of that fact and I wanted to make it stand out.  Before I knew it, my new Facebook cover photo was done and uploaded online!  But I still wanted to design more... 

Naturally, the next thing I wanted to do was update my Etsy banner to reflect the same design as my new cover photo.  For the most part, both of our Etsy shops are in a good place, but one thing that has needed some TLC is our Etsy shop banners.  Both shops have been a little bit neglected in that aspect.  Eliot deleted his banner once he started selling our 3D printed items last year.  (His old photo was of soap and since we're not selling that right now, he didn't want to mislead people.)  Happily Ever Hatter has had the same logo that I designed way back when I first started the company seven years ago.  It's a bit tired and old... plus, I'm not sure that anyone can actually see the hats I tried to make the letters into.  (The "H", "E" and "H" are supposed to look like mini Mickey and Minnie top hats.)  Thus, I decided it was time to update those.

I used my cover photo as the basis of the design for the Etsy banner.  After adding an additional photo to account for the wider layout, I formatted the text- keeping the same text from the cover photo.  Then, I found photos that fit the layout and I was done!

After that, I knew Eliot needed a new Etsy banner too.  I decided it wasn't worth it to reinvent the wheel so I copied over my Happily Ever Hatter Etsy banner.  However, I did make a few changes to the layout to account for the wider photos of the desk set, and the taller photos of the pen holders.  Then, I changed his background to teal (Go Sharks!) which I knew he would like.  I found another font to use and got his approval on it.  Finally, I found photos that fit in the layout.  Now, he has a Etsy banner again!

Then, last week, I've been working on square photos that I can use as "ads" for both my blog update, as well as for Elissa's blog.  (She's asked us to send photos to put on her blog too!)  I pretty much used the same process to create those.  I started with the square template and then added the elements from both my cover photos and shop banners.  I made sure to find photos from Happily Ever Hatter that were bright and vibrant in order to catch peoples' eyes.  For Snowblade Creations, I also found colorful photos that I thought would draw attention in to the photo.  It was a little harder since the photos are smaller, but I think I achieved my mission.

Finally, I decided that I'd finish my shop refresh by creating a new Facebook cover photo for Snowblade Creations.  This past Sunday, while Eliot and I watched the NHL's outdoor hockey game at Tahoe, I played around with layouts.  I could have used the same layout as Happily Ever Hatter but wanted something a little bit different.  Since we have so many new desk products I decided to create a layout that would showcase as many as possible.  After a spending quite a bit of time playing around with the sizes of the boxes, I finally found a balance between small and large (see below).  Then, I went through our photos and added a wide variety of our products to the design.

I am so excited about these designs.  It might not seem like much, but this is a HUGE moment for me.  I have missed my Adobe InDesign software terribly and this makes me feel like I have it back to a degree.  This works very similarly to that in that it's easy to see markers where elements line up with each other.  You can also input photos into the template.  But it's different in that you can use their library of templates to design your own.  It's so much faster than starting from scratch!  I haven't upgraded to the Canvo Pro version, but I'm really tempted to.  This will be such a huge help for our businesses that I'm really leaning toward paying to upgrade it!

The best part is that it will be really easy to change our cover photos and banners for the holidays.  I'm always impressed when Etsy shops update their banners to reflect the current season.  Online, your Etsy Shop Banner is the only "storefront" decoration you really have.  I've been known to change our Facebook cover photos seasonally, especially since it's literally just changing to a different photo of our ears.  

These new cover photos and banners will allow us to have more flexibility with these changes.  For Christmas, I can make a green backdrop for Happily Ever Hatter and fill the photos with our holiday mouse ear designs.  (I made a quick example using photos from our new holiday ears from last summer.)  For Halloween, we can have black with orange text and Halloween ears.  And I can do the same for each of the seasons and holidays.  For Snowblade Creations, I can update photos if we have products to match, or I can simply change the background and text colors to reflect the season.  

The possibilities are endless.  I'm really excited about these small updates to our shops and all that we'll be able to do with the designs in the future.  Every time I open our websites, I now feel a sense of refresh and renewal.  It's a wonderful feeling.  °o°