How to Make an Etsy Banner and Avatar in Aviary

By Meowza Katz on December 15, 2009 | 30 comments

Welcome to Part 2 of our Etsy Shop Makeover!

As a seller, you can not underestimate the importance of having a good, eye-catching banner and avatar in your shop. Your banner and avatar should tie into your shop branding and immediately tell a prospective customer what your shop is about either by evoking the mood of your shop, showcasing samples of products your shop carries, or both!

In this post, I'll be showing how to create your Etsy banner and avatar using Phoenix, Aviary's free, online Image Editor. So you won't even need expensive photo editing software!



Creating Your Banner

To create your banner, begin by opening the free Etsy banner template.

Click to open the Etsy Banner template

The template will open in Aviary's online Image Editor.



Note: The template contains a window in the center area. The content inside the window will comprise your banner and all outside content will not.

To customize your banner, you can import your product images into the document.
To do so, select File > Import File from the menu and import your product photo from your computer.

Then, drag this layer BELOW the layer labeled "Window" from the Layers Panel.

Using the Transformation Tool, you can resize and rotate the image to fit within the window and arrange your compositions for your banner.



Next, you'll want to change the shop title to your own shop name.
To do so, select the text layer labeled "Your Shop Name" from the Layers Panel, and select the Text Tool from the Tools on the left hand side.

Here, you can delete the default text and type in your own shop name.
Using the Text Tool options, you can even change the font to any font from your computer and change the color and size of the text.

You can download from thousands of free fonts to play with from dafont.com!



Once you're satisfied with your banner design, you'll need to prepare the image for use in your shop.
Using the template, you can easily crop the graphic to the appropriate size.
Select the layer, "Crop Bar" from the Layers Panel.
Then, select Image > Crop Selection from the Menu at the top to crop your image to the appropriate size of 760 px wide by 100 px tall.


Now you're ready to upload your banner to your shop in all its glory!

Select File > Export Image to save the image to your computer to take you to the Export Image menu.
From here, select JPG from the file extension dropdown, then select "generate image" to prepare the image for exporting.
When the file is prepared, press the Download button, name your file (be sure to use the .jpg extension) and save it to your computer!



Then, go to Your Etsy > Appearance, and upload your newly created banner for all the world to see!



Creating Your Avatar

Next, you'll need a shiny new avatar to go along with your banner.
Creating your banner is a simple process using Aviary's Image Editor.

Begin by launching Aviary's Image Editor.



Then, upload a photo of one of your favorite products that represents your shop to the program (File > Import File).



Then, you'll need to crop a square shaped section of the image to serve as your avatar.
To do this, select the Rectangular Selection Tool and, while holding the Ctrl key down to constrain the square proportions, drag out a square selection on the area you want cropped.



Then, select Image > Crop Selection to crop the image to your new selected square area.



Next, you'll need to resize the image to 75 x 75 pixels for preparation to upload to Etsy.
Simply select Image > Image Resize and change the width and height of the image to 75 pixels each and press OK to apply the resizing.



And you're all set!

Bonus Avatar Frames

Here are some bonus avatar frames you can add to your avatar to help promotions on your shop.


To use these templates, simply click the frame below to launch the image editor.
Then, upload your existing avatar to the file by selecting File > Import File, locate your file, then import the image.

Then, drag the layer containing your avatar BELOW the layer labeled "Frame" from the Layers Panel to apply the frame.



You can change the color of the frame by first selecting the Frame layer from the Layers Panel, then selecting Image > Hue & Saturation, and adjust the Hue slider to change the color of the frame.

Export the image to your computer (File > Export Image) and your sale avatar is all ready to go!

Remember, you can change, edit, and alter your banners and avatars as often as you want! So have fun with them!

Happy sales!

Missed Part 1 of our Etsy Shop Makeover? Check it out here, Enhancing Your Etsy Photos using Aviary's Online Photo Editor