When you run out of real estate on the fridge, it’s time to incorporate your children’s precious artwork into other projects and keepsakes! Whether it's your preschooler's self-portrait, your teenager's doodle, or your own personal art experiments, the possibilities are endless when you upload your own art to print on Spoonflower products. This article outlines the steps to prepare, upload, and purchase custom fabric and wallpaper printed with your family's drawings.
Scan Your Drawing
Clean Up Your Drawing
Upload and Adjust the Layout
Purchase Your Fabric or Wallpaper
Scan Your Drawing
To be able to purchase your drawing on Spoonflower products, you first need to scan the drawing using a flatbed scanner. All scanners are a bit different, but here are some things to keep in mind:
- Resolution - You should see the option to choose a DPI in your scanning software. Generally speaking, scanning it at the highest DPI setting that your scanner allows is recommended. This will allow you to have the most flexibility when sizing your design later and minimize any risk of pixelation or blurriness.
- File Type - Spoonflower only accepts JPGs or PNG files. Go ahead and choose one of these file types when scanning.
- Background Color - Scanning a drawing that was done on white paper is the easiest way to make sure your design doesn't have any seams when repeated. If you're a beginner to Photoshop, we'd recommend sticking to a white background to start. Since we don't print with any white inks, areas in a file that are solid white will remain unprinted. Gradients or colored backgrounds can be trickier to clean up and appear seamless, but they can certainly be tackled if you have more advanced Photoshop skills.
- Preview - Most scanning software programs will show you a preview of your image before completing the final scan. This allows you to crop out anything that you don't want included in the final scan. If possible, you can crop the image at this point so that the edges of the paper do not show up in the digital file. This will save you from having to do more cleaning up of the file later.
Once you've scanned your drawing in, save it to your computer in an obvious place with a memorable file name.
Clean Up Your Drawing
Depending on the specific drawing and quality of the scan, you might already be ready to upload it to Spoonflower for printing! However, in many cases, you'll need to clean up blemishes or make some simple adjustments before you do so. In this example, there are lots of little doodles to work with. This example walks through how to extract some of your favorite doodles, edit the colors/contrast, and combine them into your preferred layout in a new file using Adobe Photoshop.
First, open your file in Photoshop by clicking File > Open. Locate the file you scanned in earlier. We also want to have a second file open that will serve as a blank canvas for our little doodles. To do this, click File > New. This file should be 150 DPI and sized at the size (in inches) that you'd like one full repeat of your design to print.
You should now have two files open - one of your scan and another blank one. While working in the scanned image, use the lasso tool to select one of the doodles that you want printed on fabric. The regular lasso tool allows you to circle an object freeform, the polygonal lasso tool allows you to select an object using straight edge segments, and the magnet lasso tool will automatically snap to the edges of a defined area. You can learn more about these lasso tools through Adobe's help center, here.
Now copy your doodle (Edit > Copy), open up your new blank document, and paste it there (Edit > Paste). You'll need to resize it to fit onto this new canvas, so do so using Edit > Transform > Scale. This will allow you to resize it proportionally without distorting the image, just click the little boxes that appear around your pasted doodle and drag them until the doodle is the size you want.
This doodle is a little hard to see since the color is so light against the white background. Next, we'll adjust the brightness and contrast using Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. Depending on the image, you may need to adjust the brightness, contrast, or both with the sliders until the image appears how you want.
Continue adding additional doodles as desired! Make sure none of your doodles are getting cut-off on the edges of the file.
Your child's artwork is always perfect as is - but if you do have some smudges or areas that you need to clean up, you can use the eraser tool to do so. Just make sure you are working on the layer that the smudge is on.
If you decide that you want to make further changes to the color of a particular doodle, click on the layer with that doodle and then play around with Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Turn on the preview option to see the changes occur as you adjust the hue and saturation sliders. Click OK once you are happy with the edits or Cancel if you'd like to return to the original.
When you are all done, be sure to save your file as a Photoshop (.PSD) file so that if you ever want to go back and make further edits or rearrange the doodles, you have the original to work with. Then, save a copy as a JPG or PNG for uploading to Spoonflower using File > Save a copy.
Upload and Adjust the Layout
Be sure you are logged into your Spoonflower account. Then, click the user profile icon (the one that looks like a person) and click the teal Upload A Design button. Follow the screen prompts to upload your file. The Uploading Images article walks through the process in more detail.
Once you've uploaded your file, click on the Edit button below either the fabric or wallpaper option, depending on what you are hoping to order. This will adjust the layout for each product seperately. Note: If you are hoping to order a Home Decor item, you'll want to edit the fabric layout.
This will open an editing page where you can adjust the scale and repeat type of your design. When you are happy with your adjustments, click Save. In this example, we only needed to choose a preferred repeat option since we already chose an exact design size when setting up our Photoshop file.
Purchase Your Fabric or Wallpaper
Once you've saved your preferred layout, you'll return to the Design Edit and click the Buy button underneath the appropriate preview image - fabric, wallpaper, or a home decor item. This will show you the ordering page! In this example, we'll choose fabric. Choose the type of fabric (in this example, Petal Signature Cotton®) and the amount (in this example, a yard) and add it to your cart.
Finally, click on the cart icon in the upper right hand corner and continue through the checkout process and your custom order will be placed! We'd love to see what you create with your family's artwork on Spoonflower products - tag us in your finished project on Instagram!