Making Postcards 101

 

 Are you all ready to head to Paris for Valentine's Day??

Before we get started with class today,  we have had a couple of questions regarding exactly what people should post for the Postcards from Paris Blog Hop.

First...you can make a Post Card showing yourself enjoying the day alone, with a furiend, or with your Valentine! Just post the picture and link on up to the Blog Hop!

You can also do a post showing how you are spending your time while in the City of Love, and include your Post Card(or snap shot) at the beginning or end of your post.

 

  Just be creative, have fun with it and we can't wait to see what you come up with!

 

Now...on to our tutorial!

Disclaimer from Pawfessor Jakey and Mama:
When we started this tutorial we didn't realize how much Basic Pizap had changed. It now requires an "Account" to save your pictures. We understand if this isn't something you want to do, but we wanted to let you know it is possible to delete the account after you have saved your picture. We(Jakey and Mama) haven't had any issues with Pizap spamming us, but we are Pro members. We did create a temporary account in order to do this tutorial and haven't had any issues either.

With that said, let's get started!

 

First, head over to Pizap.com

Click on the Design icon

Let's check out the New Pizap Beta program!

We're going to use the post card template
(but feel free to experiment with any template)

Now let's add a background image!

By picking the Free Stock Images we know the images we use are legit and not used without pawmission

Now this is the fun part. We searched Paris(upper right red arrow) and found a bunch of beautiful places to use as a background for our post card.

We decided on a pretty picture of the Arc de Triomphe! Check out the Zoom slider at the bottom. Make sure to play around with it until you get the look you want. 


After you have the background the way you want it, let's add our subjects! Click the Cut Out icon on the left.

We're going to cut out a picture of Rosy Sassy Pants first.

We're going to use the custom option

 Now let's go find Rosy in our computer.

 We keep all our blog pictures in one place and found a picture of Rosy we could use. We highlighted the file and then clicked enter.

 Hit next to crop your photo
(you can also skip this if your photo is already a good size)

 Our Rosy picture was already cropped pretty well, but if you need to you, you can use this to make sure you are the only thing in the photo.

 Now, let's cut out Rosy!

 Drag and click, drag and click, drag and click....that's what Mama did all around Rosy until she ended up back at the beginning.

 Next, we'll make sure Mama did a good job and fix anything she might have missed.

 See those little squares, those are all the places where Mama clicked. Can you see where she missed a spot at the lower left hand arrow? She just clicked and dragged the square in to fix the boo boo! Once she was done, we clicked on Finish!

 And Ta-Da!! There is Rosy!

 We can make her bigger or smaller by clicking and dragging the gray dots and by clicking and dragging her, we placed her in just the right spot before clicking on the green check mark!


Now...We are going to use a slightly different way to add Arty! We keep cut outs of our pack to use in different Blogville events, this time we are going to add our own cut out.

 Click on the Stickers icon on the left side, then on the Use your Own blue button. Then the computer button and in search of Arty!

 We found Arty's cut out(it has a PNG extension), highlight him  and click open.

 Ta Da!! There is Arty! We want to turn him around so he is facing Rosy, so we clicked the horizontal flip icon the red arrow is pointing out to flip him around!

 Then we sized him up and positioned him....

...and Voila! Arty and Rosy in front of the Arc!
We also added text to let everyone know where we are!
We clicked the Text icon on the left side.

We clicked the blue Add Text  button

 An then added the text in the white box!
We used the Emily's Candy font, but if you click on the Font box, Pizap has bunches and bunches of fonts to choose from!

 We chose a pink color to match Arty and Rosy's beret

 You can click and drag the gray bar outwards..

 ...to make it a single line like we did if you want to.
Then you can adjust the size of the font with the little toggle buttons next to the font size.

 Next we wanted to add a little bling to our post card. Click on the Stickers icon

 We looked at the hearts, since it is Valentine's Day, but make sure to take a look at all the cool stickers they have!!

 We looked at the hearts and found one we liked...

 We used it on either side of the text for decoration. We flipped one around using the little horizontal flip icon!


 Now it's time to save our masterpiece!

Start by clicking Save at the top of the screen.

 Here is where we had to create an account. We logged in with Google. But you can choose any option you would like.


 After you create an account it will bring you to this screen

 We named our project and clicked Save to computer

 We made sure the Save file and then click OK

 and then OMD IT DISAPPEARED!!! Luckily...Mama realized where it went. It was in the "Downloads" folder.

 This can be found close to where you see ours above, in our browser AND/OR in as a folder on your computer. Once you find it, you should be able to move it to a place where you or your assistant will remember.
 We have a MAC, so Mama opened the post card by double clicking the Arty Rosy Post Card file

 The file opened in our Preview App. We clicked file, and then export...

...and then exported it someplace where Mama would remember.  For easy access, this time we saved it to our desktop!

Easy Peasy, right???


Still confused? Ask questions in the comments or email us and we will do our best to answer them! Mama and I(Jakey) would also be happy to make a post card for you and email it back to you in time for the blog hop!

For those who would like to schedule their Valentine Day post, we should have the Linkytool added to our Hoppity Page later this afternoon or tomorrow!