Handmade Gift Idea #11: Wallpapers

By Megan Goodacre

Handmade Gift Idea #11: Wallpapers

These days, "handmade" tends to include a lot of technology, and gifts are often digitally delivered.

So here's an idea if you're digitally inclined: why not make your own wallpaper images and send them to friends and relatives?

It doesn't have to be super-digital. Try giving it a handmade flavour by photographing something you made, or take a photo of the kids in their handmade knits and send them to grandparents. The advantage of digital is that it arrives instantly and doesn't require postage.

What size should it be? Well, devices are changing so quickly and display resolution is getting pretty high. I would make the resolution as high as you can, and then they can crop it to fit their device. There's a lot variation (for example, a new iPad is 2048 x 1536, and the iPhone 5 is 640 x 1136) so it's hard to make the wallpaper fit exactly. Of course, if you know exactly which device the wallpaper will end up on, you can tailor it to that screen size.

I made mine 2048 x 2048.

Tip: Wallpaper images will be viewed both horizontally (landscape) and vertically (portrait) so make sure that the main focus is in the middle.

Here are three free knitting wallpapers for you to download. Just click the image to open it, then save it to your device. The images are fairly large files, so allow them time to load after you click on them. After downloading, go to your device's settings and select the downloaded image to be the wallpaper and/or screen saver.

wallpaperYarn
wallpaperSnow
wallpaperCritters



Free iPhone and iPad mockup designed by Agence Me.