One of the funnest forms of advertising, I find, is creating memes, because this allows me to be creative and that's something I can appreciate. Now, I don't have expensive art programs, not because I don't know how to use them, but because I don't want to pay for something I don't need. And that's because all the memes I have ever created for my books were made using Microsoft Word.
Wait. What?
Yup. That's right. All I really need is one program. Plus the standard Paint program that comes with windows computers. I use this to crop my images and convert them to jpeg files.
Consider the image below as an example:
The first thing I did, was create the 3D book image. You can do this HERE for free.
Now, create a new Word document, select the insert tab and click on shapes. Choose the rectangle and size it to a perfect square since this format works well for Instagram as well. Simply hold down the shift key while resizing.
Once this is done, select the square, go to format, and pick the fill color and outline color you want. Play around with the outline width until you're happy with the way it looks.
Next, it's time to add some text. Go back to insert and select text box. The meme above contains three of these because this makes it easier to control the placement of different text fonts and sizes. The first is Sophie Barnes, the Second is No Ordinary Duke and the third is the quote.
The quote part had to be modified in order to fit around the 3D book image. After inserting the image somewhere outside your square in the document, select it, right click on it and choose 'wrap text in front of text'. This will allow you to move the image about and place it where you want. Resize it and then adjust the text around it. You may have to drop some text to a different line in order for it to look just right.
I grabbed the squiggly thing from 'insert clipart' where there are loads of great choices. If you need to remove the background from a clipart image, you can do that as well. Just select it, click format, choose color followed by 'set transparent' and then select the color in the image you want to remove. If there is more one tone it gets slightly more complicated and you'll have to use Remove Backgrounds.
And that's it. Select all the elements in your design: the square, image and text boxes, and go to the formatting tab to group everything together. Then copy and paste into Paint, trim to size and save as a jpeg file.
If you're feeling more adventurous, you can try using more clipart options for your backgrounds instead of a blank square, like I did with the image below:
I made this even more fun by downloading it onto my phone and then using an animated photo app to add pink falling rose petals. The result was great on Instagram! You can check out the result HERE
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