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How to Doodle Bag Like A Pro

There’s so many ways you can use Doodle Bag to create your own personalised tote bags and homewares We’ve crammed in as much functionality as we can to provide the best and most creative experience possible. It’s up to you how simple or complex your design is, and our goal is to make sure the design process is fun and creative. If you would like to learn more about how Doodle Bag works, read through this in-depth guide to gain all the skills to Doodle like a pro!

Add Image

Adding your own image to a design couldn’t be easier. Upon clicking on ‘add image’ you are presented with three options. The first tab allows you to upload images from your device, whether it’s your desktop computer or mobile phone. Just click the option or drag the file into the designer and it will automatically add your image to the bag. The second and third tabs allow you to add images directly from your Facebook or Instagram accounts. Just login to your account and your photo albums will load into the designer. Once your image loads you will have the chance to resize the image to your liking and position it on the tote bag. Please ensure your image is of decent quality or it might look pixelated when scaled up. Also note that no white will print on the bag, so any white on the image will show through as the colour of the fabric underneath the print.

Design Library

This is where the fun begins. Our design library contains thousands of images from many categories that can be added to your bag design and used together to compose a unique piece of artwork. Take a good look through our design library as there are further sub categories available within it. The designs available vary from simple one colour silhouettes, to lovely full colour drawings. When you’ve picked the image you like, it can be resized on the canvas and more finely tuned using the various adjustment tools. The same tools are available for adding text and images. Some images within the design are available to be re-coloured. This applies to most of the flat colour pictures. Upon selecting the image, the swatches panel will appear if the colours can be edited. Here you can select any colour you like, and some images will even allow multiple colours to be changed. There are many images created by professional artists that are all free to use for you in your bag design, so be sure to get stuck into the design library to make the most of it.

Manage Layers

This tool is essential if you want to create a more complex piece of artwork. Here you can move elements above or below each other, and also lock individual elements. By locking the element to the canvas you won’t accidently select it when trying to work on something else. Just click the padlock to lock an element, and drag layers above and below each other to your liking.

Colours Available

Some of our bags are available in different colours. If a choice is available, you will see a drop down list to the right of the design tool. Just pick the colour you like and carry on designing. There’s no price difference between the different colours and your design will not disappear if you change the colour of your bag.

Fill

Here you can choose any colour you like for your text using the colour palette. You can also enter Hex Codes into the designer to match your branding perfectly. Below that, the opacity tool adjusts the transparency of the text. Hit the patterns tab if you would like to choose a patterned fill instead. We’ve added loads of colourful patterns to the design tool, and they can be used instead of a flat colour.

Add Text

Add a special message or slogan to your bag. First, simply type the text into the box and hit ‘Add Text’. Your text will then insert onto the bag. Now when clicking on the text you are presented with loads of options to personalise it. I’ll run through each tab individually.

Position

Here you can align the text box to a specific place on the canvas. It’s really handy if you would like to place the text exactly in the middle of the print area. There’s also options to flip the text backwards or upside down.

Transform

This tab simply contains the rotate tool. You can rotate text outside of this area, but the tabbed version allows you to make exact adjustments to the rotation of the text.

Move Up / Move Down

Here you can quickly move the text layer further up or down the layer stack. This helps if you want a particular element to appear in front or behind another one.

Reset

This will remove any customisations you have made to the text and return it to its default state.

Duplicate

If you would like to copy/paste an image, just hit the duplicate icon in the top left of the images bounding box. The duplicate function will retain any colour changes you have made to the original image.

Load/Save

If you want to finish your design later, use the saving feature. Upon loading your design will return and you can finish it off.

View Selection

In the bottom right of the designer, you will find the view selection feature. Here you are able to design the front and back of the bag individually. Note certain items like aprons and tea towels only allow designing on one side of the product.

Zoom/Magnifying Glass

Using the zoom feature you can get closer in to your design, and the magnifying glass will zoom just a portion of the design allowing you to preview it.