We received a new challenge from Glenda's daughter Amberly who lives in Brady. She recently purchased an iPod Mini and a package of HP Printable Tattoos for the iPod. Amberly didn't like any of the pre-made templates available on the HP Tattoo Wizard website, so she wanted to create her own. But this is no easy task!!! The design website doesn't allow you to manipulate your graphic very much once it is uploaded and, with the hole cutouts for the iPod screen and wheel, well, there's just not that much space for a graphic. So, Amberly mailed us the package of tattoos along with a wish list of what she wanted on them. Well, my frustration level with using their website for creating these custom tattoos was met quickly.

I did a Google search for a better template for designing these tattoos so I wouldn't have to use the HP site. I finally found some info by Tony Williams at O'Reilly Digital Media. Unfortunately, his instructions were for using Adobe Photoshop for the design and I don't have this software or know how to use it. However, I found this link at his site for getting a PDF template of the tattoo. I took the PDF and exported to a JPG file so I could use it in any graphic program (I use Microsoft Digital Image Pro). From there I was able to make it a transparent tattoo template so I could layer my custom graphics behind the template and manipulate them until they looked the way I wanted. After the layout was correct, I deleted the template layer and saved the graphic as a JPG that could then be uploaded to the HP Tattoo Wizard site and make the skin. This was a LOT of work but it made things much easier than only using the tools provided on the HP Tattoo design wizard site.

Below are the printed iPod Tattoos that I did for Amberly using our Epson Stylus Photo R200 printer. The iPod Tattoos are Alice Cooper, Joan Jett, AC/DC, and Jimi Hendrix-themed... Everything that a growing rocker needs!!

Labels: iPod