Bored Monkey is excited ! --and my new banner :)

Good day all. Well I finally listed my first diorama necklace, woohoo ! It's called Bored Monkey, quite whimsical, a conversation piece.

 It took me much longer than hoped, but I had to make sure it was created properly. Instead of attaching a bail on to the back of this diorama ( because the backing is just magazine paper & sheet of plastic ), I drilled two holes and inserted some blue anodised aluminum wire to make a 'jump ring hanger'. It occurred to me a day later that the holes needed to be sealed ! Visions of a rain drop finding it's way inside the diorama & possibly causing havoc, oh no ! So I used my fav. awesome adhesive & then added 2 coats of more indoor/outdoor varnish. That should do the trick ! But I recommend this piece still be kept away from water --just to be on the safe side. He's in my Etsy shop with hopes of seeing more of the world & feeling less bored ;D

And here is my fresh new banner for my shop. Yes, it is kinda odd, but that's what I create so why not go all out ;) As much as I like to dream of a perfect neat and tidy shop, selling all the same items, well, ha-ha, I know that will never happen !

This is my banner from before:

Banners are quite easy to make, you just need a good picture editor and patience. Etsy asks your banner to be 760 pixels wide & 100 pixels high.

I use Microsoft Picture It ! Premium 10, it came with the Fuji Finepix camera I purchased over 5 yrs. ago. No it is not Photoshop but it does the trick for me. I'm not sure if Paint would work, you could try.

When I go into my Picture It program I first click on 'New' and then key in the size of what I want. Once that is done i can then go and find the pictures I want to play around with. I don't click the insert pic. button because it inserts the huge version of your pic. and can be a pain with resizing to fit a small area. Simply opening sep. pictures is better because then you can go and crop/change colour/resize/ etc... and then drag it onto your blank page ( or banner ). I tend to play going by the 'trial and error' method and, so far, it seems to work.

Making a banner for my Etsy shop is really fun ! I hope this new one represents my shop whimsiness and 'bazaar' feel.

That's it for today. I'm finishing off more tags, a pair of circus themed tags woohoo !