Roller Derby Etsy Banner

I joined roller derby a few months ago as a referee, Having not skated in my life prior to that, (aside from an unsuccessful attempt at a cute friend's birthday party). I'm a good bit better now, gotten a better grasp of my form, (I practice like I'll actually play one day, which I plan to next year), balance, and speed. As I'll be a ref in my current league, (Black Rose Rollers in Hanover, PA), I also need to learn rules... a lot of rules. What's legal, what's not. What's a Major Penalty, what's a Minor, what's a No Impact No Penalty, blah blah, and all that other (seriously no sarcasm), fun stuff. But time-taking it be. I'm also on the arts committee and plan to be doing quite a number of  designs for merchandise, bout posters, etc, which I'm of course absolutely stoked about. And that produced a great segue to this piece.

I was asked to create the banner for our Etsy page. I've been a fan of Etsy and all it stands for for a few years now, but have only visited it a few times during that period. I had no recollection that there was a little banner customization opportunity. But here it be, and the steps I took in creating it...

1. Quick Sketches. 

Seeing that this isn't a paid project, and I had more freedom to merely enjoy my progress, I didn't spend much time as I typically do on concept. I had a couple images in my head that I thought I'd give a shot. I did a few, including the ones you see here, and eventually settled on the middle sketch shown.

 2. Vector. 

I took that sketch I liked and opened it up in Illustrator. Then I vectored the poop out of it.

3. PhotoShop.

Saved the Illustrator file, and opened it up in PhotoShop. I took a photo of an old piece of paper, (I have lots of these saved for I USE lots of these... don't want to reuse the same textures over and over, or fans of your work will begin to notice). I set this to a multiply layer on top of the banner, adjusted some opacities, and settled on the following...

 

4. Splotches.

I added them. Yep. Splotches. It was brought up by the officers that the league's colors are black and maroon, and we can reference that in the splotch color. So goes the edit.

 

 5. Final

Cropped. Ready for posting.

 Go check out Black Rose Roller's Etsy page.

And the link to the Black Rose Rollers Facebook page.

I should do a banner for this blog. Someday... now that I know how easy and fun it is.