How to make a Faux Magazine Cover with PicMonkey

Ever since posting my daughters Rock Star Glam Birthday Party way back when, I have received numerous emails asking me for a template to make the magazine cover, or directions to do so. This week I received multiple emails so I figured I should make that happen for you all! I did mine in Adobe Illustrator, but since the majority of the population doesn’t own that, I am going to show you how you can make one in the free online software, PicMonkey. In Illustrator I was able to just move the elements around on each picture and not have to start from scratch each time. With PicMonkey I don’t believe that is an option, so you may want to make this a party favor they get another day, or have someone else that can help out while you are taking the time to put these together. For this example it took me about 10 minutes, start to finish.

The first step is to upload the picture you want to turn into the magazine cover. For this example, I am using one of the images of my daughter from her party. Visit picmonkey.com, click Edit, and then computer. Locate the image you want to use and upload it.

2. Adjust the crop of the image to print the size you desire – I chose 8×10 so the cover can be framed. Adjust the little box over the image so that it crops the way you want it and then click APPLY.

3. Let’s add the bar code to the cover – it’s what makes it legit, right? First you’ll need to do a google image search and locate a bar code. There are lots of free options. Once you find one, save it to your desktop. Go back to PicMonkey and click on the butterfly on the left toolbar. Next, click on “Your Own” and click My Computer. Locate the bar code that you saved and upload that.

4. Move the bar code to one of the bottom corners of your picture and adjust the size if necessary.

5. Decide on the name of your magazine, mine is “Tween Girl”. Let’s add the title to the cover. Click on the text icon in the left toolbar. Pick a font and type the name. If you want to use two fonts like I did, you will have to create two text boxes and line them up accordingly. Choose colors that are easy to read! Adjust the sizes and line the title up along the top of the image.

6. Now it’s time to add some headlines. You do this the same way we added the Magazine Title. Have fun with this! It will take a little playing around with colors and sizing. I only did a few for this example – if you are looking for inspiration, check out real magazine covers for ideas!

7. If you are having a hard time getting the text to show up, you can always add boxes behind the titles like I did for the “feature story” at the bottom. To add these, click the Butterfly and then Geometric. Click on the Rectangle and then resize it. I angled the black box for visual interest by clicking the circle in the middle. I added a second box for the second line of text and turned it green by changing Color 1 and Color 2 in the overlay pop up window. Add your text over the boxes.

8. Lastly, let’s save the image so that you can print it out and frame it as a party favor! Click on Save. Make sure you choose either Pierce or Sean for the quality. Name the file and then save it to your computer.

9. Open the jpeg and print to your printer or save to a thumb drive and bring them to a store that does photo printing!

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