How to Create Digital Art Prints to Sell on Etsy

hello and welcome to today's video in today's video i'm going to be running through how you can create digital art prints also known as art printables that you can sell on your etsy shop now i'm here in my own etsy shop so this is one of the three etsy shops that i own this is um where i sell digital art print specifically for nurseries if we scroll down here i'm just going to show you some of the digital art prints that i've created that i sell here in my shop so you can see that there's a whole range of different art prints here that i've got in the shop some of them are more custom so um people will choose their own letter and name and color whereas others here are just as they are so people will purchase them as they are okay so um if you don't know what a digital art print is essentially it is just a downloadable file that the customer will receive generally in a jpeg or pdf format that they can then download onto their computer and then send off to a printer to get printed or they can print it at home and then pop it into a frame and then set it up in you know whichever room that they decide to purchase it for so what i want to do today is just show you the process that i take when i'm creating digital art prints for my own etsy shop okay so the very first thing you want to do is you actually want to find the clip art and artwork that you're going to be incorporating into your designs now i like to use a place called creative market now i'm just going to pop over to creative market now so essentially creative market is a marketplace very similar to etsy but instead of selling like handmade goods and physical products creative market is predominantly digital products so creative digital products think things like graphics clip art font even canva templates you can get images you can even purchase things like website themes so if you had a wordpress theme that you wanted to purchase you could purchase that of creative market so there's lots of different creative elements that you can purchase and one of the creative elements that i like to purchase is cliphart to create digital prints now for my own etsy shop i sell digital prints specifically for nurseries so girl and boy nurseries if you were thinking of doing something similar what i would suggest is popping over to creative market and just popping in the search bar here just some of the keywords that you're looking for so for example i'm looking for nursery clip art there we go so it's just popped up there and then hit the search button and then it's going to give you a whole range so hundreds of different types of graphics and elements that you could potentially use within your designs so if i'm just going to scroll through some of these so you don't actually have to be an artist or an illustrator or even a designer in order to create prints that you can sell on etsy the key here is to um when you do decide that you you know like a certain bundle or graphics pack is that you want to grab those elements within the graphics pack and then either use different elements on canva or you could use um different elements within the pack to make it unique so you just don't want to just grab one of the elements and then pop it onto your print when you purchase a product from creative market that is um pretty much what comes with a license to be able to use it okay but i'll show you more about that in just a moment so you would just go ahead here and scroll through some of these elements obviously everyone's got different styles and different themes that perhaps they would like to incorporate in their designs so you can see here's some like watercolor style elements and graphics here up here as well some watercolor sometimes you can get more like a boho theme so what i would suggest doing is thinking about what kind of theme you would like to have across all of your products in your etsy shop and then try and pick elements based on that so for example if you had a um a boho theme so here for example if there's this nursery abstract collection and it's a boho theme i wouldn't probably pair that with let's say these cutesy watercolor animals okay because they're just um they're a bit disjointed and disconnected what i actually like to do is go like if i see something like that i like for example i like this rainbow bundle i would click on that bundle and then it would open up and then i would have a look through some of the images that they've got here as you can see this could be a really interesting way to incorporate it into an art print and then what i would do is i would actually go to the seller because then you could find maybe additional items or maybe something else that they sell in their shop that you might like so that's what i did i like i think i believe it's called tatty letters so i went over here and i opened up the shop and then you can see here that this um this seller this illustrator um has a whole range of different bundles and packs that all have the same vibe they all have that similar style and just that you know just that feeling behind it so what i would suggest doing is actually checking to see whether or not this seller has a bundle of their items in one pack that you could purchase that way you could make hundreds of different prints all based around the same similar style okay so what i did is i had a look at the top here and i noticed that this seller has actually two different bundles there's here there's a kids bundle and then here is like a bundle baby animal clip up bundle and this really caught my eye because while i was scrolling through this seller's shop there were a couple of um packs that i was really interested in specifically the sleeping baby animals and i thought well instead of just buying this pack here the sleeping baby animals pack i could actually purchase just for a little bit more so ten dollars more i could actually purchase this whole entire baby bundle so i'm just going to open that up now and i'm just going to show you a couple of things that you want to look out for when you are purchasing items from creative market so that way you can actually use it within the design program that we're actually going to be using to create our digital prints so um before i do go on i just want to mention that i will be creating these prints in canva now i do use and i recommend the canva pro account to create these digital prints and i'll explain more as to why in just a moment when we start designing but when you are looking for your clipart you just want to make sure that you are getting the right file type specifically you're looking for png file type okay if there is an svg that's a bonus because it means that you can actually import certain file types that you can change the color of and sometimes parts of the actual element itself so but what we are looking for is png and the reason why you want to look for png is because it's a very high quality file and also it comes with a transparent background meaning that you can use different elements and overlap them without having a white or black background behind it so you just want to make sure of that now you're always going to want to purchase a commercial a license that means that you can actually use these items to on sell if you're purchasing the personal license it means that you can only use it for personal use and you can't actually make any money off of it so you just want to make note of that if you want any more information about the license type and how you can use these products you just want to go here to where it says what are these and there's a link here and it'll explain to you all the different license types okay so sometimes you can get a little bit more information about the products so you can see here you can get 232 dollars worth of goods for only 26. well we are going to be purchasing the commercial license here but even for 34 that's quite a still so um if you want more information about the product all you need to do is just click down here now it's going to give you links to all the different products or the packs within this actual design so you can go ahead and click on all of those i've already done a little bit of a snoop around and i'm quite happy with this bundle so i'm going to go ahead and purchase it and then i'm going to show you how after once you've purchased how you can then start importing some of these elements into your canva design okay so i'm just going to go ahead and do that now i'm just going to click the buy now button actually before i go ahead and purchase this bundle um i will leave a link to this exact bundle down in the description box below this video that way if you're interested in creating artwork from these designs you you can have that direct link okay all right now so i'm going to go ahead and hit the buy now button so once you have downloaded your folder with all of your clipart images so your png files what i would recommend is going over to canva and then creating a separate folder where you can actually store all of the png files that you'll be using within your design so as you can see for example i've created a baby nursery clip art folder so if i just open this up you'll see all of the elements that i have decided that i've grabbed from the folder so the file that i just purchased from creative market and i've inserted them in here to actually use within my design so you can see here we've got these png images here now i also found within the purchase so the bundle that i've purchased there was other designs within the folder that are actually svg files now svg files are actually kind of like bonus graphics that you're able to use within canva and the reason why they're bonus graphics is because these elements can actually be changed i.e the colors can be changed so when you've got a png they come as is the color that they are created and designed in or illustrated in are the color that they remain but with an svg file you can actually change the colors now i'll show you how this is done within canva when we start designing but for now like i mentioned just go ahead and upload all the clip arts that you think that you'll be using within this design now let's go ahead and create a design now when i create my designs for my etsy shop i like to create four different sizes they are essentially four different ratios so i do a four by five ratio a three by four ratio a two by three ratio and then a paper size ratio so that way pretty much every single size format or frame has been covered so whatever frame that the customer has that they would like to include the print in i will be giving them a file size in those different ratios now i also like to offer my customers a higher quality pdf document now a good thing about canva is although you can't get high quality jpegs and pngs i believe they're only 96 dpi with a pdf with the pdf print version you can actually get a 300 dpi which is pretty much the standard of what a customer would come to expect when they purchase a print from you okay so let's go ahead and start creating this design so what you want to do is go to create a design here and then the for the first design for a 4x5 ratio i like to do a 8 inch by 10 inch design so go ahead to custom size at the bottom here let's go ahead and select inches and then go to 8 here by 10 and then go create a new design and it's going to open up a blank document for you to start doing all the fun stuff so start creating and designing now what i like to do first is open up that folder that we have all our clipart in so go to the bottom here to the bottom left hand corner where it says folders then go ahead and search for your baby nursery clip art folder and then it's going to open up all of those um png and svg files that you can now start importing into your design now um i'm going to go with this cute little i don't know if it's a cat or a raccoon but either way it's so cute so i'm just going to start off with that one now um like i mentioned before when you are using these elements you just want to take note of that commercial license now in order to use these you want to make sure that you are adding different elements into it to make it um different and change it up so that it's unique to you okay so you wouldn't want to go ahead and just put this element within this document and then save it as is because that wouldn't be complying with the license of the purchase agreement okay so what you can do is you can start adding different elements so for example i'm going to be adding this dream big little one let's go ahead and pop that down here at the bottom let's make this a little bit bigger and drag this up and then i'm going to go ahead and select one of these svg files and i'm going to show you how you can actually edit this so for example you can't actually edit these elements so you can't change the colors here you can't change any of these colors because this is a like an image file but these ones here are svg files so for example let's say i like this star let's just drag it into the corner here so we can just see it a bit more clearly can you see straight away as soon as we select that file this little color box appears if i click on that i can then go ahead and change the color so for example purposes let's say i wanted to change it to this pink you could do that with one click that's the great thing about having access to svg files so let's go ahead and change this up to perhaps a color within this design now if we scroll down here in this color section towards the bottom you're actually going to get a range of different colors that have been taken out from this image so here it's got photo colors and it's going to show you your little image here you can actually select the colors within the photo so let's say i wanted it to be this golden mustard color you could do that let's say i wanted to grab another png this one for example now this one here has four different colors so what i could do potentially is change all of these colors to the colors within this image so let's scroll down again let's go and change that to a silver to a gray to a deep gray and then to the master color and can you see how all of those have now changed within this element so what i would do is i would just start um grabbing some of these different elements that you have uploaded into your font into your folder i would start adding them in and then um have a play around with it until you come up with something a design that you're really happy with and then something that would um you know attract your dream customer i guess you could say okay i'm going to go ahead and have a play around with this now until i get to something that i actually like and then i'll show you how we'll save this um to then upload it to your etsy listing okay so once you are happy with the design that you've created what i would highly suggest doing is actually renaming your design to make sure that it's something that your customer can easily understand so they'll know what the size is and what the design is so when they come to selecting the size that they're after it will then be easier for them to to choose the right size for their frame so i'd like to change this to instead of the 8 by 10 i like to change it to the ratio so it's going to be a 4 by five ratio and the design is sleeping animal let's say let's call it number one okay so they know it's a five four by five ratio and it's a sleeping animal double o one okay now i'll show you how you would save this to then upload into your etsy listing so all you need to do is go to the download button here then where it says file type we want to be selecting the pdf print which is the high quality multi-page document so let's go ahead and click that so that way we're ensuring that it's going to be a 300 dpi file and then all you need to do is click the download button and it's going to download this file for you okay and just like that we have our file created let's go ahead and open this up now to see what it looks like and there we go so there is our brand new design that we've just created in the file type and the ratio of 4x5 that your customer can download okay let's go ahead and close that off now um another pro of having canva pro is that you can actually resize this exact document into a different size that means you don't have to then go ahead and recreate this entire design from scratch all you need to do is go to the resize button here click on that one and then you can actually change the the design size here so let's say i wanted to do a three by four ratio size so a three by four ratio size might be a nine inch by 12 inch frame so let's go ahead and change that to 9 inches by 12 inches and then hit the copy and resize button and what it's going to do is it's going to magically create this in a 9 inch by 12 inch frame okay so you can see here it's now created in this frame now some in some cases you might actually need to adjust the sizing of your elements to make sure that it fits within the frame properly but in this case it seems to look um quite good so then what i would go ahead and do is change this up to the top here to instead of a four by five ratio i would change that to a three by four ratio and then leave it as a sleeping animal one that's fine again go to the download button select pdf print and then hit the download button and then now you've got your two different ratios so i would go ahead and do this for a two by three ratio and then also a paper size ratio so that you've got those four different sizes there that will be available for your customer okay let's close that off now and let's open that one up to make sure that it looks fine you always want to check to make sure that your um print actually looks right and that you're happy with it so that looks pretty good to me fantastic all right let's go ahead and close that off now you know how to find the clipart create a design and you know how to save the actual file types now let's go ahead and actually create a mock-up image that you will use for your thumbnail for your etsy listing so if i go back to my etsy shop now i'll show you what i mean so for example so these are the thumbnail images for my products now these here are not images that i took myself they are mock-up images so what i've done is i've taken my design and then uploaded it into this image so that it looks like you know it's been printed out and um and it gives the customer a good idea of what they can expect when they pop it into a frame themselves so let's go ahead and create something similar to this within canva so let's go back to canva let's go back to create a design and let's do a 2000 by 2000 let's change sorry that to pixels so we want 2 000 pixels by 2000 now i would recommend um anything above 2000 by 2000 to make sure that you have a good quality image to add to your etsy shop listing that will prevent it from being blurry okay i'm going to show you two different ways that you can actually create a mock-up image within canva first is to actually search for a mock-up image within canva itself so to do that let's go to photos here to the left and at the top let's type in locker and go nursery because we're doing a nursery themed print and then hit enter and let's see what comes up so canva actually going to give you a range of different designs now obviously if you're pro if you're a pro user which i highly recommend you're going to have a lot more options available to use within your designs but just keep scrolling see if something um that you see here might be fitting for your design so for example let's say you liked this design here what i would do is i would click into that and then i would resize it to make sure that it fits within your canvas like so fantastic perhaps you could you know put it to the side i would just add it to the middle like that okay very good okay so now what we need to do actually i might make this just a little bit bigger there we go okay um now what we need to do is we actually need to save our um our file so the one that we just created instead of saving it as a pdf what we will need to do is we need to save it as a png file that way we can actually import it into this mock-up image so let's go back to our 4x5 ratio so this this design for example now what i want you to do is go to the download button here but instead of going to pdf print like we did before what we need to do is we need to save it as a png so go ahead and click png like it says up here and then go to the download button and once that's downloaded we want to then import it into our design so let's just close that off let's go back to our mock-up design here let's go ahead and go back to our folder where we've got our clipart just so we know where this mock-up's going to be and let's go ahead and drag that one in okay so now we've got our design here all you need to do is now insert it into this mock-up so with one click we can insert it and then here is where you can start playing around with the sizing now i'm going to scroll in just a little bit let's go ahead and close that let's zoom out just a little bit here okay and let's go ahead and resize that so it fits within our design now as you can see our print size here is not the same size as the frame within this mock-up so let's just go back to fit so as you can see can you see this little gap here now if i click out of that that doesn't look right okay it doesn't look as if that's a real image it doesn't look like it's a real mock-up it looks like i've just inserted this image into this mock-up now that's not what we want right so we'll work around for this is so if like your frame doesn't fit your mock-up all you need to do is go back to your original design here go back to the download button where it says png but instead of just selecting png what i want you to do is click the transparent background here click on that one and then go to download and what it's going to do is it's actually going to save your design but without that white background behind it and i'll show you why this is so important in just a second so let's close that off let's go back to our mock-up design let's go ahead now and upload that png file but with the transparent background and you'll know it's transparent because you'll see this this black behind the actual image itself let's go ahead and delete this one now and let's go and insert the one with the transparent background and can you see now that white background has disappeared and we've got this transparent background and that gives us so much more flexibility when it comes to inserting it and making it look as if it's within the actual design itself so just have a play around with it to make sure that it fits and the perfect thing about doing it like this is that it it um also makes sure that you know those shadow effects that you can see within the corners it makes it appear that they are still there when you've got that white um background um it can kind of look a little bit blocky so it doesn't appear i don't know to look as effective so let's go ahead and scroll in now so we can see that just a little bit better can you see how like that shadow effect still appears but our design still remains as is looks pretty good doesn't it okay let's go back to fit now you can also play around with the brightness and contrast of the original mock-up image to make perhaps this a little bit more brighter so just go to the adjust button here you can go to brightness like so i wouldn't muck around with it too much because you don't want it to look too overly saturated or overexposed i guess you would say so let's go maybe to five and see how that looks okay that looks pretty good okay so that is one way that you can create a mock-up i'm going to show you a second way now so let's go ahead and add a page so we can create a separate lock-up now what i want you to do is go ahead and select your original design with one click i just want you to insert it directly into the canvas now within the canva it actually has a brand new feature where you can do a one-click mock-up and i love this brand new feature because it makes creating etsy listing images so much more easier for me now to access this all you need to do is go to the effects button at the top here click on that once and then it's going to give you a whole range of different effects that you can apply to this image one of them being a smart mock-up now wait for that to load sometimes it can take a while now if you don't have this mock-ups you might have to actually install it so just scroll all the way to the bottom and you might see it down here once you find it just click it and then it'll install the effect for you okay so what you want to do is go to the see all button let that load and then just keep scrolling until you see a frames category so keep scrolling keep scrolling keep scrolling so here is what i'm talking about so the frames and posters now within um canva it actually supplies a whole range of different frames and posters that you can use within a mock-up now i did notice that there is kind of like a nursery themed style mock-up here that would be suitable for our design so let's go ahead and click that once and watch it magically appear into the frame okay so there we go so now our um our print has been inserted within this mock-up now if we scroll in ever so slightly you're going to notice that my design has actually been cut off here right now obviously that's not what we want so you can actually adjust this within canva by just going to the toggle button here and then where it says crop to fill just change that to custom and then at the bottom here it's got size let's go ahead and just change the size so that it just shrinks and fits our design okay i think that looks good might just go to 85 and see what that looks like perfect okay so once you're happy with that hit the apply button now let's go ahead and just scroll out so we can see what we're looking at now obviously we want to get rid of all this white around our design so let's go ahead and just resize this so it fills up our entire canvas let's make that maybe a little bit bigger so the focus is on the actual design fantastic wow that looks really good i'm quite happy with that okay so there are our thumbnail images or our images that we can use within our actual etsy listing so there's two different ways you can actually use an image within canva itself and then insert a png with a transparent background like i did up here or you could use the mockups effect within canva itself so in order to now save these what you would do is go to the download button save it as a png file hit the download button and then it's going to download our images and then there are our final images that we just created so our thumbnail images so then what you would do is you would grab these thumbnail images you would go ahead to etsy create a brand new listing upload these images add your title your tags your description your price and then also upload those pdf files as well so that once your customer purchases your product that will automatically receive those pdf files okay i hope that this was helpful for you today and that this has given you a little bit of inspiration to go ahead and start creating digital art prints for your own etsy shop okay i will leave links to all the programs and elements that i used within this tutorial so that way if you're looking for them you can go ahead and find them now i'll also leave a link in the description box that will give you access to a 30-day free trial with canva pro that way if you haven't already upgraded you can and you've got 30 days to have a play around with it and use it as you wish and then once you're ready you can upgrade and then start making money on etsy selling digital prints just like i do okay i will catch you next time friends have a great week bye for now

Channel: Alicia Rafiei

Views: 40,488

Keywords:

Id: ohQMNzRa790

Length: 31min 43sec (1903 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021