WARNING: This post will be incredibly boring unless you a) have a Mac and are interested in making a banner for your Etsy shop without a graphics program or b) you love laughing at how complicated Squirrel Momma can make things if she puts her mind to it.
I really enjoy putting fresh banners up for my Etsy shop as the seasons change. Unfortunately, that means I needed to make new banners, which, given the fact that the only graphics program on my Mac is Inkscape and I am a bear of very little brain when it comes to Inkscape, used to be a mighty painful process.
But awhile back I read a post in the Etsy forums about using word processing programs to create banners. Basically, an Etsy banner needs to be 760 pixels wide and 100 pixels high.
Yeah, I know. Pixels? I can't do pixels with Pages for the Mac!
But the forum post pointed out that if I make something 27 centimeters wide and 3.55 centimeters high it will be the right size! So to make an Etsy banner in Mac Pages you simply:
1. Change Page Setup to sideways.
2. In Preferences change the ruler units to centimeters, and enable the vertical ruler.
3. Open a blank page and create a graphics box that is 27 cm by 3.55 cm (I usually make it a smidge smaller, as part can get cropped off later on in this process).
4. Create your banner.
5. Export to your desktop as a PDF.
6. Open the PDF and use Grab...Selection to exactly outline your banner (keep the crosshairs just outside your banner so that you don't cut off your border if you have one).
7. Save your "grabbed selection" as a JPEG. Congratulations--your new banner is ready to upload!
Quite impressive in its Rube Goldberg convolutions, right? But don't get too impressed--I still haven't figured out this fancy schmancy Typepad yet.