How to Make a Quick Valentine

Pawfessor Jakey, Blogville's Director of Artistic Services,   here to teach you a quick and easy way to make a Valentine on the computer!!

This month we are going to use Pic Monkey in order to create our masterpiece!! There are no programs to download and they have lots of different ways to "dress up" for FREE!!! 

First, we will need a volunteer from the audience.....
you (or your staff) can use any type of photo 
(taken with camera, a phone or a tablet) in PicMonkey. 

Thanks for volunteering, Arty!! 
 Now, let's make Mama a Valentine! 

First thing we do is go to PicMonkey

Once you are there Click on Edit

Once you click edit you will see this screen,  
 as you can see you can get your
picture from a few different places. Arty's picture is on Mama's computer, so that is where we clicked!

Once you find your picture, click it to highlight and then click "open"

Now, lets gt the "dressing up" started by clicking the snowflake on the lower left.
Clicking this will take us to where we can see all of the themes.

Since we are going to make a Valentine, click on the Sweethearts theme to get to the lovey dovey, heart stuff!

Let's start by framing Arty in a big heart. To do this we will click on Heart Cutouts (right under the Frames heading).

You can choose one of the six swatches or even a solid color!

You can move the heart to exactly where you want it by clicking and dragging it. Then, by playing with the slides on the lower right side, you can make the heart smaller or bigger and even tilt it to the right or to the left! Play with these sliders until you have something you like!

 Once you have the heart right where you want it and have the swatch/color that works for you, click "Apply".

Now, lets create a place where we can write a little note to Mama. We used a label for our writing, so we clicked on "Labels".

First click a label from the choices on the left. You can move the label around by just clicking and dragging it where ever you want it! Then you can enlarge the label by clicking and dragging any of the corners. You can experiment with colors with the box on the right.  As you will see in the next picture we chose a white background by clicking at the top of the colored area (where the point of the arrow is).

Now that we have a place to write, let's add some text!
Click on the "Sweet Nothings" tab on the left.

First, highlight the font you would like to "write" in.   Next, click the "Add Text" button and this will create the text box like the one you see in Arty's valentine.  You can click in the box and drag it to where you want to start your typing.

Click inside the text box and go ahead and type away! You can change the text color in the color box to the right. You can help the text fit the label by dragging the corner(s) of the text box.

Now let's add a couple of finishing touches! There are lots of
fun things to choose from, we chose a couple of "doodly hearts.

Click the heart(s) you would like to use. You can move them around by clicking the heart and dragging it to where you would like to place it.  Change the size by dragging the corners and even change the color of the heart!

Now that you have things all pretty, let's save it!
Click on "Save" up at the top of the page.

On the left you will see a few different things to choose. Mama and I are telling you what we use. 
Depending on your computer, and what you are going to use the picture for, you may want to use different settings. Feel free to ask us in the comments or email us with any questions.
Name your file something that you will remember, we used Arty-Valentine. We saved it to medium format (this works for just about everything). The dimensions will automatically fill in (Mama is picky so she picks the size herself).

 Next Click Save to my Computer and we are almost done!

 Make sure you save the final product somewhere you remember it. I can't tell you how many times Mama has saved something and then forgot where she saved it!! In this case, Mama saved it to her Desktop.

And TA-DA
You can add the dressed up photo to your blog just like you add a regular picture!!!

Questions, concerns....???
Let us know via email or comments and we will do our best to explain it in upcoming posts or get back to you with the answer!!

This is Jakey, Director of Artistic Services, saying....
Happy Creating and we will see you next month with our next photo class!!!





We will be saving all our photo classes to our "Photo Class" page for easy reference

Please note that we are not advertising, and are in no way affiliated with PicMonkey. It is a photo editing site that we enjoy using only. All our opinions and directions are our own.