Did you notice the cute little "Cian" chalkboard print on the shelves in the nursery? You'll be happy to know that I created that in about 10 minutes on Pic Monkey and today I'm going to show you how to make your own!
First you will need to download this chalkboard background and one (or all) of these fonts: A Song for Jennifer, Sketchblock or KG Second Chances (Sketch). There are plenty of other "chalkboard" fonts out there but those are the three that I like the best.
For this process you are going to use Pic Monkey, a free online image editor.
Here we go:
Select Design > 8 x 10. This is the optimal size if you want to print your finished piece. If you need it bigger, enter a custom size.
Select Textures > Your Own. Then find the location of the saved chalkboard background that you previously downloaded.
In this case, applying a texture is essentially applying a background.
Rotate the orientation to landscape.
The next part is to add the text. Click on the text icon then Add Text. This is the KG Second Changes font. The color is white and it's faded to 25%. Play around with the fade. I ended up only fading to 15% for my final image.
This is the Sketch Block font. Again, the color is white and it's faded to 25%.
Now for the cuteness! Click on the overlays option (the one with the butterfly). Scroll down to critters/cutimals/buggles etc. Try to pick just one. Yes, they are all insanely adorable! This part will be hard!!
Make them bigger or smaller by dragging the edges of the box. The same method works on text too.
After playing around with different font options, you'll see that I ended up with the font "A Song for Jennifer" in all caps. The cute giraffe adds the perfect finishing touch!
Save your file as a jpeg. I uploaded my finished one to Shutterfly and had it printed up. Shutterfly doesn't allow you to upload .png files so it must be a jpeg.
This tutorial can be used to make many other types of fun chalkboard printables such as these that I have available for download. You could also create some fun signs for your entry way such as these that I made last year:
I'd love to see what you end up creating - feel free to share the link to your own chalkboard printables in the comments section!
Sidenote: I've had some questions about how to pronounce Cian. It's actually pronounced "Key-In" (see this link: http://www.babynamesofireland.com/cian). Not Sy-An or See-In or Key-An :-)