#stimboard tutorial

I’ll use this request I got for a Raine X Eda from The Owl House Stimboard as an example, this is how to do a character or ship Stimboard.

Step One: Get the image

Get the image of the character/ship you want to make a Stimboard out of. You can use Google Images for this, but if the request is for an obscure character or ship you might have to screenshot it directly from the source.

You will want to take note of the colours or themes of said characters. If the character has teal hair, like Raine, you will want to add some teal into the board. If a character uses knives a lot, like Pillow from BFDI, you will want to add some knives. Make sure to add trigger warnings for those, though.

Sometimes requests will suggest certain themes, make sure to add those if requested.

Step Two: Search for gifs

Get your first gif. If you are crediting your gifs, you have to add them one at a time. Here’s how I do it:

First, search what you want into Tumblr. You can do this with anything, colours, textures, fidgets, etc., you just have to add ‘stim’ at the end.

‘Fursuit paw stim’

‘Red stim’

‘Blue and white stim’

‘Snow globe stim’

‘Pastel stim’

The more broad you make your search, the more posts will come up, but you do want to find the right type of colours for your board. I would recommend searching ‘fursuit paw stim’ instead of ‘orange fursuit paw stim’ becuase most people don’t tag their stimboards that way.

Here’s my first search for my Raine X Eda board. Since this is a ship board, I’ll need more than one type of stim, but im starting with this one.

Step Three: Add gifs

Scroll though posts until you find the gif you want.

I selected this one.

On mobile, you can save a gif to your photos by pressing and holding in the image until the ‘save to photos’ button appears.

Then you’ll want to copy the link to the post by pressing on the three dots in the corner and selecting ‘copy link’

Afterwards, don’t save another image yet. Go to the ask and add the image, copy-pasting the link in as an embed.

You do this by selecting some text or an emoji, and pressing this link button in the corner, then pasting in the link and pressing ‘add link’

Now you have one gif and one link. But this isn’t your entire post, so you’ll want to save this as a draft. Here’s how you do that:

Then press ‘save draft’ and go back into the search tab to repeat the process until you have enough gifs!

Step Four: Formatting

On mobile, you can drag and drop images and gifs into place. There’s three images allowed in one row, which is good because that’s how most Stimboards are formatted. You’ll want the image of the character to be in the centre, and make sure the credits match to where the gifs are placed. A typical Stimboard is nine images, eight gifs around one image, which works perfectly because Tumblr for mobile allows no more than ten images per post.

Step Five: Finished!

First we pick a theme. For example, let’s say we want to make a purple stimboard. You would first find yourself a purple gif!

I like this purple star gif from this user’s stimboard, so I am going to copy the link for the whole stimboard and paste it in Discord! I have a specific channel in a personal server for this.

If you don’t use discord, I’m sure there are other methods for saving your links, such as a Google doc. You will need these stimboard links later.

Next, I open the stimboard link through Discoed and save the gif I want to my camera roll, like so.

After that we put the gif in our stimboard! Most stimboards are made up of nine gifs, but for the sake of convenience, I’m just going to show how to credit a single gif.

Choose an emoji (I’m using the Purple Heart 💜), or a simple “X” and highlight it. Click the insert link button. This is where you will need your stimboard link.

Copy the stimboard link and paste it in that box, and click “Add Link”

Once you’ve done that, the emoji or “X” should have a line under it like this;

And that’s how you credit your gifs! Do this nine times (I usually save nine gifs at once to save time, rather than literally repeating these steps over and over) and you’ll have yourself a typical 3x3 stimboard!

1. find + download your stims.

so, you’ve got your character or your theme, and now you need to find the good stims. what terms do you search, what things do you look for. i’ll tell ya.

tumblr tip!!!!! ~ when you search on tumblr, don’t click enter after typing, look at the search and pick the option under ‘go to #tag’. you’ll see more posts that way!

for specific aesthetics, it is very easy to just search up ‘’aesthetic’ stim’ (eg ‘light academia stim’, ‘kidcore stim’) and then just go through and find neat stims you feel fit.

you can do this tip with pretty much anything else, like colours, specific stims, etc.

the best stims to use is subjective, so there isn’t really a rule to it. just pick what you think is best.

so, when i pick my stims, i:

find a stim i like and download it. i usually save it in a specific folder for gifs.

i then like the post, so that i can refer back to it later when i credit the gif sources.

i then find another stim i like, download it, like it, etc etc, until i have eight stims.

2. converting your gifs from webp to gif.

so, tumblr has an annoying habit of downloading everything as webp, so here’s the work around i use. you have to do this individually for all the gifs. you can find bulk converters, but i’ve found they ruin the quality of the gifs, so i use this method.

i start off on this page, though resizing your stims isn’t required. i go for 250 x 250 px.

once you’ve done that, do not download the gif, instead go to the button next to it, to GIF.

if this doesn’t appear, that means tumblr downloaded it as a gif and you can download it and move on! this can sometimes happen, but check all your stims.

when you click on that, you come to another bit of the website. this is actual part where you convert from webp to gif.

all you have to do is click the convert button and redownload the gif! and you’re done!

3. (optional) editing your gifs!

if you pick stims that all fit together pretty well, you can just move on to 4. but, if you picked a few stims that don’t fit together colour wise, etc, i’ll tell you how to fix that!

there are a few ways to make your stims look cohesive.

for matching colours, go for hue or colour layers! these are a very easy way to make your gifs match. but, they might not work as well on stims with hands, stims with multiple colours, etc.

experiment with other things! if your stims are too bright or loud, lower the saturation; if your stims are too dark or too light, mess with the brightness!

this is all trial and error, i’ll be honest. but if you can’t find a solution to a problem, don’t worry. chances are, no one will take notice of it in the finished post. trust me.

4. making the middle icon!

you can do this at any point in the project; honestly, we tend to do this first, so we know how to make the stims look when we edit them. but, you can do it whenever.

these are easy, just go about them as if you were making a regular icon! i usually go for a smaller icon size, and make them simpler than my usual icons, but its really up to personal preference.

5. compiling your post!

we have tips on stimboard composition you can find here! but otherwise, this step is pretty easy. add them all to your post and align them into the three grid you usually see.

now, you can type in your title, add any comments you want to make, and then pick how you are going to lay out your credits!

6. credit

so, on the stimboards you usually see around, you will see a line of emojis or symbols, with links. this is where they found the stims they used!

pick your symbols/emojis! lay them out in three’s, representing the layers of your stimboard.

refer back to the posts you liked earlier when picking your stims. and find where the link for that specific gif is on that post. its usually pretty obvious which one it is.

you might have to click through a few different web pages to find the original creator, but the best way to tell if its the original poster, is if it links back to youtube, or instagram, instead of tumblr.

if the link goes to a dead blog/link, go back and credit the last post you saw it on.

then, go back to your post and copy that link into the symbol that represents that specific stim.

do this for all your stims! 

7. tagging

tagging stimboards is like tagging most other posts, but there are a few things that are reccomended!

first tag your usual edit/fandom stuff, then the specific stims used. 

this is because, its common for people in the stimming community to block tags of the stims they do not like, so make sure to tag the specific stims.

after that, tag things like hands, knives, etc! this is for the same reason as above.