Happy Birthday Sticker

 

In my last blogpost I told you how I managed to make an image semi-transparent, using Canva.

Here you can see how I used that semi-transparent image for a "Happy Birthday!" Sticker on Zazzle. 

This sticker can be put on gifts bags, envelopes with your gift in it, and even used to fix the wrapping paper. 
 

 

Happy Birthday Red Hearts Sticker
by ullahennig

How to make an image semi-transparent with Canva

 Sometimes you need to make an image semi transparent in order to use it for print on demand purposes. 

I created this red hearts design with playground AI. I wanted to use the image for designing a sticker with a text on it on Zazzle. As you can see the readablity of the text would not be very good due to the opacity of the hearts. Now Zazzle does not have a tool with which you can change the opacity / transparency of an image. 

So what could I do? Well thanks to YouTube and Mey Aroyo's channel I found the solution and of course had to try it out myself on the spot:

Using Canva solves the problem. You create a file the size of your image, upload the image, put it on the file. You then select the image. On the top of the image you see the symbol for transparency. Clicking on it opens a slider with which you can change the transparency to your liking. You can see the result in the image below. You can then download the image, enlarge it, upload it to your print on demand shop and put a text on it. Have fun!

Creating prints off your AI Images with Canva

 For some time now I paint and draw - with brush and paint and in a digital way, mostly with Inkscape. But only since the last two years or so I had my paintings printed out, framed and hanged on the wall or printed and used for greeting cards. I scan my pieces and have them printed in a nearby drugstore. 

Now, with my AI artworks it is a bit difficult, most of all when working with DALL-E2. DALL-E2 renders square images. Greeting card formats are rectangles, not squares. Blowing up the image takes parts of the image away which is not good. But there is a solution: Canva!

Here are some examples of what I did:

The images consist of three layers: 

• The first layer which later serves as a kind of frame is the background. In Canva, you can have backgrounds in the color you like, there are even backgrounds with textures. 
• The second layer is a white rectangle (rectangles can be found among "elements"). You can also have all kinds of color, but white resembles a mount. 
• The third layer is the image itself. 

Each layer can be positioned in the center and the middle.

When this is done, the image can be downloaded and be printed at the drugstore or wherever you go when you want to have your photos printed out.

Anger

This portrait was developped from a mask line drawing and painted with acrylic inks. I then scanned in the finished painting, removed the background, uploaded it to Canva and placed it on the mysterious looking starry background. 

Red Mask

This is a true mixed media piece - it contains traditional art and digital design. The mask itself was drawn in Inkscape and coloured in with acrylic inks. I then scanned it in and uploaded it to Canva and put it on the gradient background. 

I am relatively new to Canva and already deeply in love with it. My art consists of abstract pieces and a lot of illustrations on a white background, such as beetles, butterflies and masks. Canva makes it possible to arrange these illustrations in many, many ways, and even to use more than one in one picture.

Experiences with Canva and Lunapic

In my last post I showed you the green beetle which I had painted with acrylicinks. I had saved it in png format and tried to delete the background in gimp, but as Gimp does not have the magic eraser it is quite difficult and time consuming to do it with it.

I uploaded the file to Canva - unfortunately only Canva Pro has the "remove background" filter, and I use the free version. But there is Youtube - and actually I found a very useful tip: There is an online image editing software which removes the background with one click - You can find it on lunapic.com. 

So I removed the background there, downloaded the file and uploaded it again to Canva and copied the beetle and rearranged the two images till I was satisfied with the result.