How to Draw on Top of an Instagram Story Repost

Adding your own drawing to an Instagram Story repost is a clever way to boost its personality and stop scrollers in their tracks. It transforms a simple share into a custom piece of content with your unique stamp on it. This guide gives you the exact steps to draw on a repost and then walks through some creative ideas you can use today to make your shared stories stand out.

Why Bother Customizing a Story Repost?

In a rapid-fire content feed, the standard Instagram repost can easily blend in. When a follower tags your brand, it’s exciting, and hitting "Add to your story" is the quick and easy way to share that user-generated content (UGC). But taking just 30 extra seconds to customize it with a drawing, a note, or a creative highlight does a few important things for your brand.

First, it shows you actively care. You didn’t just reflexively hit the share button. You took a moment to engage with the content, making the original creator feel seen and valued. This deepens community bonds. Second, it maintains your brand’s aesthetic. If your brand is vibrant and playful, a standard repost can feel a bit plain. A quick doodle or a colorful scribble instantly injects your unique style. And finally, it grabs more attention. A customized, colorful reshare is simply more visually interesting than a plain one, which gives you a better shot at stopping the thumb-scroll and getting your message seen.

The Step-by-Step Guide to Drawing on an Instagram Story Repost

Ready to get started? The process is very straightforward once you know where to look. Here's exactly how to do it.

Step 1: Mentioned, Mapped, and Ready

This all starts when someone tags your account in their own Story. This mention will show up in your Direct Messages (DMs).

• Open your Instagram DMs and find the message that says "[Username] mentioned you in their story."
• Tap on that message. You'll see a preview of their story with a link underneath that says “Add to your story.”
• Tap that link. Instagram will immediately take you into the Story editor, with their story placed as a resizable sticker on top of a default gradient background.

Step 2: Find Your Drawing Canvas

Once you’re in the Story editor, you’ll see the repost sitting in the middle of your screen. This is your canvas. Look at the icons at the top right of your screen. You should see a sticker icon (a smiley face in a square), a text icon (“Aa”), and a few others. The one you want is the squiggle icon.

That squiggle is the gateway to all of Instagram's drawing tools. Tap it, and you'll enter Drawing Mode.

Step 3: Pick Your Tools of the Trade

After tapping the squiggle icon, your top menu changes to showcase the drawing tools, and a color palette appears at the bottom. Here's a quick rundown of what you have to work with:

• Top Toolbar: At the very top of the screen (from left to right), you'll find different 'pens.' This is where you choose the style of your line:
  • Standard Marker: Your basic, solid, round-tipped pen.
  • Arrow: Just like the standard marker, but it adds an arrowhead to the end of any line you draw. Perfect for pointing things out.
  • Highlighter: A semi-transparent marker. It’s ideal for coloring in backgrounds or highlighting text without completely covering it.
  • Neon Pen: This gives your lines a subtle, glowing outer-edge effect.
  • Eraser: This isn't just for fixing mistakes! The eraser is a creative tool in its own right, which we’ll get to later.
• Left-Side Slider: On the far left of your screen, you'll see a vertical slider. This controls the size of your brush tip. Drag it up for a thicker line and down for a finer point.
• Bottom Color Palette: Swipe left and right through the colored circles at the bottom to choose your color. If you need a specific shade, tap and hold on any color to open an advanced color spectrum.

The Pro-Tip: The Color Picker Tool

Notice that little eyedropper icon on the far left of your color palette? That's the Color Picker, and it’s a branding game-changer. Tap it, and then drag the circle around your screen. It will sample and match any color from the reposted story itself. Using this ensures your drawings use a cohesive, perfectly matched color palette, making your additions feel intentional and professionally designed.

Step 4: Draw Freely and Share Your Masterpiece

With your tool and color selected, just use your finger (or a stylus) to draw directly on the screen. Made a mistake? No sweat. At the top left of the screen, there's an 'Undo' button. You can tap it repeatedly to step back through your last few actions.

When you're happy with your design, tap “Done” in the top right corner. You'll be taken back to the main Story editor where you can then add more elements like text, GIFs, stickers, or music. Once it’s perfect, share it to your Story!

Creative Ideas to Make Your Reposts Pop

Okay, you know the mechanics. Now for the fun part: what should you actually draw? Here are some simple but effective ideas to elevate your reposts.

1. Create a Solid (or Translucent) Background

One of the most popular ways to customize a repost is by creating a full-screen color background that frames the original content. This helps it align with your brand's color schemes.

1. Enter Drawing Mode and select your brand color.
2. Choose the Highlighter tool.
3. Now, press and hold your finger anywhere on the screen for about three seconds. The entire screen will fill with that color, creating a semi-transparent overlay. If you use the standard Marker tool, you'll get a solid, opaque background.
4. Once you have your background, select the Eraser tool. Adjust the size with the slider on the left, and "erase" the area over the repost sticker to reveal it again. You can create cool shapes, scribble reveals, or just a simple rectangular window.

2. Circle, Underline, and Point

The simplest customizations are often the most effective. Use the drawing tools to direct your audience’s attention to what matters most in the shared story.

• Use the Arrow Pen: Draw a clean arrow pointing directly at a product, your handle, or a key piece of information.
• Circle an Element: Draw a hand-drawn circle around the user who tagged you and add text like "Thanks for sharing!" to make them feel special.
• Underline Key Text: If the original story has text, use the highlighter tool to underline a compelling quote or positive review. It’s less aggressive than a solid underline.

3. Frame the Content with a Doodle Border

Don't want to mess with a full-screen background? Just draw a simple frame around the reposted Story sticker itself. This takes just a few seconds and adds a fun, scrapbook-like feel. You can do a simple rectangle, a dashed-line frame, or add corner flourishes. This small touch makes the content feel way more intentional.

4. Add On-Brand Flourishes

Think about what types of simple doodles align with your brand's personality. These don't have to be complex works of art. A few quick scribbles can communicate your brand’s vibe instantly.

• For a playful cafe: Draw little steam lines rising from a pictured coffee cup or small coffee bean doodles.
• For a modern clothing brand: Use minimalist lines, simple stars, or geometric shapes around the shared content.
• For a creator or coach: Add little sparkling dots or simple starbursts around a testimonial to make it shine.

Even adding something as simple as three hand-drawn dots or an underline in your brand color can build powerful visual consistency over time.

5. Mix Drawings with Other Elements

Your drawings don't have to live in a vacuum. Integrate them with Instagram’s other creative tools for maximum impact. Add a "Thank You" GIF and draw a hand-drawn bubble around it. Use the text tool to write a message and then use the pen to underline key words. By layering drawings with GIFs, text, and question stickers, you create a rich, multi-layered visual that’s much more engaging than any single element on its own.

For example, if someone shares a photo of your product, you could draw little hearts floating from it, add a poll sticker asking "Love this combo?", and write a caption thanking the user by name. This stack of engagement elements cues your audience that you’re creating active, conversational content.

Final Thoughts

Drawing on an Instagram story repost is one of those small efforts that yields surprisingly big results. It transforms a passive share into an active piece of community celebration, allowing you to inject your brand's voice, aesthetic, and gratitude into every piece of user-generated content you highlight.

Juggling all these creative moments, on top of scheduling Reels, videos, and feed posts across multiple platforms, can get chaotic. At Postbase, we built our platform for the way social media actually works today - focused heavily on Stories, Reels, and TikToks. Our visual calendar lets you plan out your entire creative strategy, and since our scheduling is designed for modern video-first content, you can trust that everything goes live exactly when it's supposed to. It helps you manage the big picture so you have more time for those thoughtful, creative details that build a great brand.