The Easiest Way to Create Graphics & Book Covers (Stencil Review)

Do you ever need great graphics for social media or even ebook covers, but don’t want to pay a graphic artist?

Here's something fun

Download this FREE PDF poster and hang it on your wall to remind yourself each day: YOU'VE GOT THIS!

Then it’s time to check out Stencil, the easiest-to-use graphic program available. I’m no artist, but I’ve created most of my own social media graphics, page headers, ebook covers and more – and Stencil does the heavy lifting. It creates beautiful, sharable graphics that’ll make others wonder how you became such a good artist!

Watch the video above where I take you behind the scenes of Stencil and show you why you’ll love it. Then grab this LIFETIME deal before it goes away. (There’s even a one-click, 60-day refund period, so there’s no risk at all. Get Stencil now and never pay for graphics again!

Full Transcription of Chris’ Stencil Review:

Have you ever wanted to create social media images, page headers or even book covers and just found graphic programs difficult? Me too. Well, today we’re going to look at Stencil. It’s the easiest to use graphic design program on the market. I’m Christopher Maselli. And let’s jump into Stencil.

What Is Stencil?

I’m no artist, but I am someone who needs to have artwork created all the time on social media and for other purposes too, so that’s why I turned to a program like Stencil to help me out. If you’re familiar with Canva, which is generally what a lot of people have heard of, you’re going to be very familiar with Stencil because it works a lot like Canva, but I find it much easier. So Stencil is a program that can essentially help you do some really great graphic design, even if you’re not an artist, because it does a lot of that heavy lifting for you.

I used to use Photoshop and I kind of was able to play around with it just enough to be dangerous, if you know what I mean. But then I found Stencil and it does everything I needed to do in Photoshop, and it’s so much easier. So if you’re someone who needs a lot of basic kind of graphics done and even some pretty difficult ones, I’m going to show you Stencil. I think you’re going to like it. So let me just give you some examples of the kinds of things I’ve created with Stencil.

So here’s my Twitter page. You see this header here that’s got our picture on it the background and our logo and some graphics? All that was created right in Stencil. I also used it to create a lot of social media posts. So like, well, here’s an ebook I created with it, as well as the ad for the e-book that was all created in Stencil. If you scroll down here in my feed, you’ll see things like quotes from authors that was created in Stencil.

Here’s another quote. It’s a scripture created in Stencil. Here’s a writing prompt created in Stencil. You can do some really cool things within Stencil even though you’re not a graphic artist. How cool? Let me show you this. This is an actual book, as is this, as is this, as is this, that I created the covers all within Stencil.

I went in, found the graphics, added the typeface, was even able to do the back of the book and then upload it to Amazon in order to get the book printed. That’s not something that you could normally do in an online graphics program very easily, but in Stencil it was super easy. And so I’m going to show you now. Let’s go behind the scenes and see exactly how I created these kind of things within this program.

Behind the Scenes of Stencil

So here we are behind the scenes in Stencil. When you first opened Stencil, it’s going to look exactly like this. You’re going to have on your right hand side a very large canvas, along with a few icons of things you can do on the canvas. And then on the left, you’ve got a bunch of menus that you can take advantage of. And we’ll look at several of those as we create a few images.

So the first image I want to create is a quote. OK, so to do that first I’ve got to put in my quote. So I’m going to click on “add text” and then it puts a little placeholder in here and I’m going to paste in a quote I found earlier: “The six golden rules of writing, read, read, read and write, write, write.” Sounds about right to me. All right. And then you can reposition this however you want. You can choose from a different font. It’s got a lot of those in there. And you can also change the size of the font, right, the line height in the font. You can add drop shadows. You can change the text color, outline colors, background colors. You can even go so far as to add your own fonts, it gives you more that you can add yourself.

You can even click here to import Google fonts. And it’ll actually I’m going to click it just so you can see it will let you import from the thousands of Google fonts that are available. So you could add any kind of font that you want to what you’re creating.

So let’s go back to the the front here. And here we are. And there’s my quote now. I need to add a picture to that. Right. So I’m going to come over here and I can search for a picture so I might search for a picture of a book. And now what it’s doing is it’s searching over five million royalty free pictures. All these you can use in the things that you create because they’re royalty free and then I can select the one I want. So, like, I’m going to grab this one and I’m going to drop it. And I can either set it as my background or I can overlay my image, which means put it on top of another image. Well, I’m just going to set this is my background and look how easy this is.

I mean, is that amazing? And there is my quote.And I can still what I like to do is add a little watermark of my my logo. Right. Well, I’ve uploaded some of my logos here, so I’m going to go under my logos. I’m going to grab it and look, there it is right on the picture. And I can put that wherever I want. I can also make a bigger. Notice how it keeps it nice and crisp, or I can make it smaller. Just make it there along the side. I could also add another picture if I want, or I can go to icons and let’s say I want to add–it has over three million icons.

Let’s say I want to add some little icon of something here like, oh, I don’t know, let’s say a lightning bolt because why not, right? So I can put a little lightning bolt on there and you can get real creative and do some fun stuff with this and you can get real fancy too. And it’s as easy as that. Now, they actually even make this easier if you’re wanting to create quotes.

So I’m going to delete my image, start all over again and check this out. They have an area called “Quotes,” and you can go in here and you can search for something like writing. Find a quote you like, drag or click on it to add it to the added to the background and then go back to your photos. And now I can say, like, search for funny and I can find a funny image to put with a funny quote like this, like, oh, I don’t know, this horse is kind of funny here.

And it’ll immediately if I click on it like I did once there, it will immediately add it to the background. It’s kind of crazy. And you can again, you can move this stuff around and make it easier to read. I might want to go ahead and change this to be like white. Right. You can also do things like if I want to choose a background color for this, I could choose a red background color, but then I could also make it fade in a little bit like that.

So you can do, like I said, some really fancy things as you create this. You can also like, right now this image is behind or that those words are behind this red. Well, I can go ahead and say move those forward and bring them forward. So it’s really very powerful. But this is pretty much all the tools that you get, right. So it doesn’t get overly powerful.

That’s one thing I didn’t like as much about Canva when I (Canva) when I was using it is that there were so many options. And I just wanted something simple that could do a really good job. You can also change your image, change the colors on it, make it black and white, whatever you want. There’s a bunch of options for that. You can flip things to make it vertical, make and go the other way. And you can also, of course, upload pictures and you can crop so if you want to just get a portion of the picture, you can do that too.

You can also work with a grid line if that helps when you’re designing. I don’t use that a whole lot. And focus mode means it just takes away all those extra menus and makes it so that you can just focus on the work itself. And I like this up here.

It’s gotten undo. So there’s something I did that I didn’t like, I can hit undo. It is going to go back to the way it was last and it has a whole list of those things. You can click on this history and see everything I’ve done and go back to wherever you want to in time. So I’m going to go back to right after I set that image and see how it went back to that point in time. Or you can go forward in time, which is pretty, pretty cool. So that works really nicely.

The other thing it has, if you like, working with something that someone else has already created is it has a bunch of these templates. There’s over a thousand of these and they add more of these all the time. I’ve been with Stencil for a couple of years and they regularly add new things like templates. So let me create a new document. You know, a reset one, and now what I can do is I can just grab like a template that they’ve created, this is for a Twitch cover photo and you can see it’s got everything already in there. And then I can go in and I can edit the text, change out the pictures, that sort of thing as I want to.

You can even manipulate them a little bit. So like let’s say on this one, I want to, you know, crop it. I can do that. You just click the button and now it’s going to say, well, how do you want to crop it? Right. And so I’m going to go ahead and choose.

To do it like that, and it’s going to be a lot tighter now, and I can also tilt it. You can also do some cool things, I don’t know if you noticed that when I was hitting on crop, it has some different things, ways you can crop it. It’s not there. There it is. Over here on the side, you can like, say, turn that into a heart. Right. And maybe make it a little bit bigger to get her whole face in there and then apply. And what this is going to do is it’s got a crop that image to have a heart shaped. Now, I mean, is that cool or what? I love that this thing is so much fun.

You can also upload a bunch of pictures and you can save your pictures. When you save, you can either save overall or you can put your things into collections or create your own templates. So like, let’s say you’re creating images for YouTube, right,  for your videos. That would be like the placeholders on the front. And you could save one of those as a template. And then from now on, any time you create new placeholders, you just open up the template. It makes it really easy to do. And of course, I showed you that you can do your logos and you can have all your saved images.

Let me show you some other things you can do. I’m going to create another new image, and this time I’m going to choose… Look at all of these different kinds of things you can create.

They have, it says, over 170 presets. But let’s say I want to create a cover header for Twitter, like what you saw on my own Twitter account. So I type in Twitter and it brings all these things in. You can create a post, profile picture, et cetera. And look, Twitter header. What it does then is it brings in this template where I can see where I shouldn’t put things because that’s those are what they call “unsafe areas.”

Right. This is my “safe area” where you’ll see what I write. So then what I can do is I can go to my saved images and I can grab a picture of my wife and myself. And I’m going to put that on this because this is for… Or I’m sorry, I don’t want to go to saved images. Those are the images I’ve created. I want to go to uploads. Here in uploads, I’ve got a picture of my wife and myself, I’m going to go ahead and put that on the image and you’ll notice, see how our shoulders are cut off there, right there on the side.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to flip that horizontally. Looks much nicer, right? Maybe make it a little bit bigger. And then I’m going to go ahead and choose our logo, which I’ve uploaded, and I’m going to put that on here. This is a header for Twitter. Look how easy that is. And I might go ahead and just say something like add a little text that says, “put yourself on the fast track to success.”

OK, and now notice that’s a little big. So I could just make the text a little smaller and it’ll fit right in there. You can tweak that however you want. And there’s a pretty nice cover image for Twitter and it took me maybe 30 seconds to do that. That’s without even making it super, super nice. Right. That’s just the basics. Now check this out. Let’s say I also need to create one for Facebook. So what I can do is I can click on this while that image is up and choose Facebook.

And I’m going to find a Facebook cover here. And look at this. Boom!. There is the size of the Facebook cover, and it kept all of my assets in there at the time. So now I have to do is just reposition a few things. I’m going to make us a little bigger, make this a little smaller, maybe pull it down there, and then I’m to pull this over here, something like that.

Let me show you one more thing I mentioned earlier that I had worked on some books right within here. Well, this is a book I downloaded this template from Amazon that has the correct size for a book. And I was able to put the entire book right here in Stencil. This one is small enough that I couldn’t have a spine on it, but normally you’d have a spine also.

But you can see I brought in an image. I created a little bar up here, put on the title, and it looks pretty slick. Right. And when you actually then and I haven’t finished the back, but when you finish this and upload it to Amazon, you can then go ahead and get it printed. So, for instance, let me find another one here.

This is a finished book cover that I created for a client and it’s this book right here. And you can see how it looks real nice. So it looks like this. Now, look at it there on the screen. You can see it’s the same book and they were able to print it just like that. Looks really slick.

I’m going to reset my image once again because I want to show you that this also has the ability to integrate with WordPress. This is a feature a lot of people don’t even realize that Stencil can do. But check this out. When you go to your WordPress dashboard, and here I am creating a post. Let’s say I want to put a picture right here in my post. Well, if you’ve been working with WordPress before, you know, you click on “Add Media.”

And what it does is it goes to your media library where you can add pictures, but Stencil takes it a step further. It adds up here “Stencil.” Now look at this: when I create, when I click on that word Stencil, it actually loads Stencil right here into WordPress. And this is what’s neat is that it is the full version of Stencil that I’m working with. And boom, there it is.

So right here now I can go ahead. And just like you saw before, I can go ahead and start creating things in Stencil, you know, pull in a picture. Let’s say I’m going to have a rocket right here on my image. I don’t know why I’d want that, let’s say I did OK. And I’m going to make it flying this way. It is going to be a big one. OK, so that’s what I that’s what I want to have, let’s say.

All I have to do now is click on this to add it to my media library and then it takes it from Stencil, puts it right in to my WordPress media library. And of course I can still give it a name. So I’m going to call this “rocket.” And then here it is in my library where I can name it, whatever I want to name it with the, you know, the alt text and all that sort of thing.

I can go ahead and edit it. And I can call it Rocket, and I’m going to insert that into my post and there it is, pretty cool. So I love Stencil. All right. So next, let’s look at the pricing and the deals that are currently out there, because if you’re like me, you’re probably like, man, I want that.

Pricing and Deals for Stencil

Stencil has a great deal available right now, but before I show you that, I want to show you their regular prices so you can get an idea of what they generally offer. First of all, they have a free plan. They call that a free plan for the hobbyist and lets you save about 10 images a month. It gives you some limited availabilities. It’s really just a great way to try the service. Most people would either go with the Pro or Unlimited plan.

I would think most people would go with the Unlimited because the Pro limits you quite a bit as far as how many images you can save every month. And the Unlimited plan just takes away all the restraints. It gives you unlimited images, uploading unlimited images, unlimited collections, unlimited favorites. You still get access to all those fonts, all those templates, those five million plus photos, three million plus icons. Like you’ll never have to find a photo again outside of Stencil. It just works so great. And of course, they’ve got font uploads and premium support.

So normally it would cost about $20 a month for that, which is really a pretty good deal, especially if you pay annually, then it’s only $12 a month, which is again a decent deal. You save 40%. But right now for the next few weeks, AppSumo is offering an even better deal. Check this out. If you go to writing.fyi/stencil, you will see AppSumo’s deal and they’re offering that Unlimited plan, right?

See right here, lifetime access to Stencil’s Unlimited plan. It has everything in the Unlimited plan and it’s only $49 one time purchase. That means this pays for itself within just a few months. I got in on this deal several years ago when Stencil offered it. Sometimes these companies do this, though they’ll offer an unlimited deal for a limited time just to infuse some cash for marketing and development. Well, I got in on it a few years ago and I’ve been using it every month since completely free because it was paid for once and then it’s free after that.

Well, they’re doing it again and you can get in on it for only $49 one time. I don’t like those monthly charges. Right. That sometimes you have to pay apps and that sort of thing. You don’t have to pay monthly charges if you get in on this one time deal. That’s it: writing.fyi/stencil. And you can get it for $49.

The great thing about this too is it comes with a 60 day money back guarantee and it’s literally a one click, “I need to refund this. I decided I don’t want it” and they will cancel your Stencil account and you’ll get your money back. So there’s really no risk here.

If you are looking for a good graphics program, they can help you create images on social media, book covers, all the kind of things that you need for your hobby or your small business, Stencil is the way to go. I don’t think you’ll regret it. It’s one of my favorite graphic programs on the net and it’s so easy to use.

Grab it at writing.fyi/stencil. I’m Chris and I hope that all your writing and your business and your life has momentum.