Last week on our DIY Blog Beautifying Journey, I promised a Picnik Loss Coping Tip, but first, here are all the AMAZING things we’ve covered so far…

Fabulous Fonts	DIY Quote Box
Dreamy Header	Adding a Custom Menu Bar
Sensational Signature w/Graphics	Sharing a Comment Pic thru Gravatar
Customized Sidebar Titles	Top WordPress Plugins
Easy Watermark Image	Promote your Blog with Email Siggy
Customized Favicon

I don’t know why google hates me, but for some reason, it seems they might!  They announced earlier this year that they were going to be closing Picnik and that sent all of blogland into a tither. 

Apparently it’s what all of us posers use to try to pretend that we’re as cool as those photoshop people.  :)

My sister keeps telling me I need to get on the Photoshop bandwagon, but it’s just so hard, dog-gone-it! 

I loved how easy picnik was! 

After the announcement, blog posts were flying about with recommendations on a picnik replacement complete with tutorials and examples.

But none of them came close to our beloved Picnik! 

In the spirit of capitalism, some supposedly former employees of Picnik saw the outcry and decided to start a very picnik-esque photo editing site… PicMonkey! 

I mentioned Monday how very similar it really is to Picnik… so much so that I’m scared that the giant google claws will stretch out and smash them before we even get a chance to  make use of it! 

One part of our pain in losing Picnik  is losing the easy access to all the extra fun embellishments that add a special touch especially when you are creating a button or graphic. 

I decided that I would join the revolution that the picmonkey peeps started and try to hang onto whatever Picnik goodness I can before it’s all gone.  :)

Ready to see exactly how to do that?

Step 1… Go to Picnik and open a collage.  They made this really hard to figure out since they added their ‘we’re closing’ page. Click on the Library tab, and then Start at the far left.

Then click Make a Collage.

Change the color to white and click Done.

Step 2… Add a frame to see where your edges are.  This isn’t necessary of course, but makes it much easier.  Choose your frame and click apply.

Step 3… Now click stickers to show all your many options.

Pick your favorites and click away.  Obviously it’s not feasible to save ALL the stickers, but we can easily save some of our faves!

Remember to enlarge them as big as you’ll think you may need them.  You can always go smaller, but it ain’t so easy to go bigger.

You should also leave plenty of room around each one too, so you’ll be able to crop easily later, and don’t forget to change any colors now.

Step 4… Check the seasonal sections for more super stickers.  I grouped like ones together too for easier organization.

Do you like how I added the fire extinguisher for my cooking theme?  :)

Some of my other faves are the Mother’s Day frames and flowers…

I also like the Tags in the Seasonal Section under Holiday!

Step 5… Now we gotta save.  Choose the saving size all the way up to 10 since we want it as big as possible, and name it something descriptive.  It may help to have them all start with the word Picnik and include in the name the category of clip art… such as, “Picnik Food Clip Art.” 

Another tip?  You can right click anywhere in the white space of the pop up window and click “New” and then “Folder” to create a new and special Picnik only folder.  Name it something like “Picnik Clip Art” and save all your faves there so you’ll be able to find them again.

 

Once you’ve saved it, you don’t have to start from scratch to save more stickers.  Just click Continue Editing…

And one by one, click each sticker and delete them until you have a blank page again.

If you’re smart, I guess you could save your blank page at that point, and have that as your starting point too.  :)

NOW THEN!

Once you’ve saved all the ones you can’t possibly live without, what are you supposed to DO with them?

Since you have them organized and saved on your computer, whenever you think you might need one of those individual images, you can upload and crop them in picmonkey!  {Or whatever other photo editing site you like!}

Click Crop…

And crop tightly around whatever image you need and click apply.  You want as little of the white space around it as possible.

Voila! Now you have that image separate and ready to go!

Just add your text or whatever else you’d like. 

Picmonkey has a limited amount of stickers at this point, but in the meantime, we’ll have our Picnik sticker stash to tide us over.  {If only picmonkey had a photobasket option! Ah!}

 

So what do you think??  Sound like a good plan for coping with our upcoming Picnik loss?  Less than a MONTH until poor Picnik is no more!

As a thank you to all of you wonderful peeps, and to save you some time and effort, I’m sharing the ones I picked out with YOU!   Woot! 

Now you’ll just have to follow the steps above to save any of your favorites that I didn’t catch.  :)

     

Just click the images to enlarge, right click and choose save image as! 

If you do choose to download these, I would LOVE it if you would subscribe or join me on facebook!  It would be great to see more of you! 

It’s most certainly not a perfect Picnik solution, but it’s making the loss just a bit easier to cope with for me!! 

What photo editing site do you plan to switch to?

 

*Sometimes I link up at these parties… Weekend Bloggy Link up, Tatertots & Jello, House of Hepworths,Bowl Full of Lemons,Organize & Decorate Everything, Not Just a Housewife, Funky Junk Interiors, Somewhat Simple, Shabby Creek Cottage,No Minimalist Here, Skip to my Lou,Today’s Creative Blog, the 36th Avenue, Thrifty Décor Chick, Home Stories A-Z, Five Days Five Ways, How to Nest for Less, and Someday Crafts. You should check ‘em out!!