there's an app for that

 

it has come to my attention that the old adage, "there's an app for that," is literally true about everything. want to take better pictures? vsco. erase a photobomber? touch retouch. stick to your diet? lose it. translate your novel into german? iTranslate. (that is a shout out to you, person in germany who reads this blog. hi!)  

over the weekend, i played with three new apps and had a blast creating typographic prints with them. i often see things like this that people have made, on tumblr for instance, but they're not for sale, which is a bummer. finally figuring out how to make some of my own was enormously fun. i decided i'd show you how too.

 the apps i used were paper 53, pic collage, and pic lab hd on my ipad.

so cute for a kitchen, right?

wouldn't this make a sweet gift framed for a new couple?

one thing you should know about me is that i have the navigational sense of a lemming. if i'm driving, i will always take the route i know even if it's longer. i'm sure there is a better way to make these, or some magic all-in-one app, but i haven't stumbled upon it yet. so i'll show you the way i know, and you can feel free to mock me if i meandered needlessly around a town i could have just cut right through.

the first two above were done with pic collage and pic lab hd. pic collage is the avenue to a blank, colored background, and pic lab puts the text on it.

so, here we go. open pic collage (i'll assume you've downloaded them by now). once you're in the app, tap the screen to start a new collage. in the bottom left, choose "change background."

a menu will come up with lots of color choices (scroll right for solids). select one you like, then close by hitting the down arrow at the top left of the backgrounds menu.

that's all you need from this app. save to your camera roll by hitting the box with the arrow coming out of it, located in the bottom right corner of the screen. choose "save to library."

now you have a blank background that you will use pic lab to put text on.

open pic lab hd. tap the picture in the bottom left corner of the screen to access your pictures. choose camera roll, and then choose the background you just made.

to start typing, find the "Aa" on the bottom tool bar. when you tap it, the screen will look like this:

first type your text. then, use the color wheel at the top of the keyboard to customize the color of your text. when you're done, hit the check mark at the top right of the keyboard.

the font menu will then appear. choose the one you like.

after your font is decided, tap the blue check mark to close that menu. now you can use the grey circle at the bottom right of your text box to shrink or enlarge your text. drag the text box with your finger to move it into place.

you can add as many text boxes as you want by tapping the "Aa" to start over again. to edit any of them again, just double tap them, or tap the menu box in the top left of the screen and choose which text you'd like to edit.

when you're all done, tap the blue check mark at the top right of the screen. it will give you several options. i always "save to gallery" to move it to my camera roll.

that's it. i ordered two of the ones i made through shutterfly, and i'm excited to see how they turn out.

{update: the 8 x 10 turned out awesome!! and the 5 x 7 printed too close to the margin on one side, making it off center. i should have previewed the layout in shutterfly- oops!}

for the remaining posters up there (the ones with the calligraphy and the hand-drawn cupcake), i used the same general plan- paper 53 to do the artwork, and then pic lab to put the text on.

paper 53 is so super fun, and i am still figuring out how to use it. the free version includes the calligraphy pen, and that's all i used for my posters. the app can better explain how to navigate it than i can, so i won't bore you with that here. all i can say is, play with it- you'll have fun.

 paper 53 was the only app i used for "you wash, i'll dry" and "mr. and mrs." when you save your work, be sure to put the "save background" function on. (access it by tapping the box with the arrow to save, then tapping camera roll, then sliding to "on"). otherwise, your artwork will be floating on a clear background and won't print correctly.

for the "nothing a cupcake can't fix" poster, i drew the cupcake in paper 53, again using the calligraphy pen. after saving to my camera roll, i rotated them to portait orientation. then i opened pic lab and added text the same way described above.

 

i hope this was as fun and empowering to learn for you as it was for me. you can tell i'm not a tech geek (yet) so if my explanations were lacking, please forgive me!