How to Make and Use Your Own Zazzle Quick Create Template

Before you start, you need to get organized. Decide what you want in your template. I took Shopaholic Chick's suggestion about making my templates by product shapes. What you see above is the hidden folder in which my Square Template for my cawinecountry store lives. The last products straggled into it today. I started this template a couple of days ago, but two products hadnt' made it by this morning, though the rest posted yesterday. I waited until evening and they still weren't there. I was patient until this morning, and decided to make those two products again. They finally posted tonight. So I used it to publish the products live. The image will link (I hope) to the folder where these products are live. You will notice in the image above that all the products in this template have the symbol of invisibility (red circle around eye.) I like to make all folders invisible until the products appear. It sometimes takes a day for them to get where they belong, but tonight it only took a couple of hours for another design I made tonight to find its folder.

So far in this shop I have finished two templates -- Round and Square. Before I started making the templates I created a folder called "Templates." Then I put the name of each template I planned to create into that folder, and I made them all hidden. You must make the folder homes first, because they need to be there when you make your template. So I have the hidden folder "Templates, " and so far I have five template folders inside: Rectangular Horizontal, Rectangular Vertical, Round, Square, and Oval. In my barbsbooks store, I also have one called "tea sets" to hold the new teapots, candy jars, pitchers, and jumbo mugs. I also include a regular mug so that a complete set can be made. I do include these products in my rectangular horizontal template, but it doesn't always work with some designs on these products and I have to delete them. I also find it's useless to include a tie most of the time.

So, first make your template folder and hide it. Then make a hidden folder for each template you plan to make before you make it.

I was only able to include half of this into a screen shot, so I chose the bottom half. Please refer to this when you read the section below.

First, go to your account -> Products.

Click "Quick Create" at the top of your product list.

In step 1, Choose products to create. Beside "Use your own templates," click "change," unless the folder with the home you've made for your template you want to use is showing . Make sure the correct store name is selected. I was working in "barbsbooks" when I snapped these photos, so the correct name of the store is there and the template name is also correct. If you have more than one store, you might want to include the store name in front of the template folder so it will be easier to tell if you have made a mistake. I will probably change this folder name to "barbsbooks template."

In step 2, unless you are using the same image you used when you made the template, click "change" under the image, and select the image you want to use.

In step 3, for the fit/fill option, I suggest choosing "template defaults" to preserve any customizing you did when making your template.

Click the orange "Create Products" button in the bottom right corner.

The image above shows that I made a mistake when I created the mug product for the template. You can see the design is different than the other products and has retained the design of the rest of the products I created for the template. I finally went back to see what was wrong, and I see that somehow I managed to have "Image 2" instead of "Image 1" in the template options. I will have to delete this from the template and make a new mug with the right label for the image, using the original template image you see and saving it again to the hidden template folder. For the purposes of this Quick Create session, I will click customize at the top of the product, and change the image to the one that matches the other products in this batch.

So, at this step, you will customize any products that don't look the way you want them to. If you add text, make it a template. At this stage, you can lock objects you want to remain. I do this after I add my link formation and copyright notice to the backs of greeting cards and postcards. For greeting cards I normally change the font to "Dom" and resize it to 8 or 9. For postcards, I have a new trick now. I add the copyright statement with my link in one line. I resize the line to 3, after switching to the "Dom" font. Then I hit the rotate button three times until the line is vertical so that if you turned the card on its side it would be parallel and above the line down the middle of the card. Then I pull the text right onto the line so it covers it, and then I delete the line. My text then becomes the line and replaces it. It comes out like this. (please click the image to go look at the back side, since I can't get a link to just the back side.


Atascadero Sunken Gardens at Sunset by barbsbooks
Browse more Atascadero Postcards

When you have all the products looking as you want them to look, click "next" at the bottom.

I started the image at Store Category because the rest seemed pretty clear.

Fill in the title you want for this design and your product description in the places provided. I normally have these ready to paste in. Remember they have to apply to all products. Product specific descriptions or tags can be edited in later by editing your products.

Choose your main category, and this time select right down to the most specific subcategory.

Change your store category to the category you made for this product or the category in your store you want to put it in. Make sure the right store name is showing next to the drop down list.

Choose your audience.

Select your product visibility. I normally keep it public. I keep its folder home hidden until the products have arrived in the folder.

I click "yes" on "showing the customize button, because I think it will increase my sales.

Select your royalty and check the "right to publish" square.

Decipher and type in the Captcha -- the most time-consuming part of this page for me, since I can't see the characters very well, and some of the characters aren't even on my keyboard. I have to keep refreshing until I find something I think I can read. Your mileage may vary if your eyes and keyboard are better than mine.

Click "Post it" at the bottom and you are finished.

Wasn't that easy?