Creating a Circle Desktop shortcut icon

Short version (what I did):

1. make circles with transparent backgrounds in Powerpoint.
2. and layer one image over another in Irfanview
3. then convert with IrfanView to make a desktop icon
4. and only then learn about icoconverter.com which I know can do 3 and suspect can do 1

Long version:

Retrieve five year old (2015) posts about making desktop icons

• DIY desktop icons with IrfanView
• Sons are useful for making icons

.., find a tool I learned about then is apparently a deprecated project, so lots of relearning...

goal

I wanted to show and tell my "customised a desktop icon to my own Flickr" story but the dots are trademarked by Yahoo. I don't know if that would mean one couldn't show non-commercial images incorporating the dots - but I also don't want to spend the time checking, so I erred on the side of caution.

For illustration I contemplated other icon customisations. Say, place the ALIA starry thing in the centre of a Chrome circle for the shortcut to my ALIA PD Drive folder. But - mm no - Chrome is probs trademarked too. I might still do it to practice the technique, but won't show it :-(

I wanted to layer two side by side coloured circles over my scaredydragon and have the combination in a circle with transparent background as an .ico file.

What I did

So while I can't show you the end result, I can share videos to illustrate what I learned.  

Also note it took many rinse and repeats to select the precise portion of the picture (the dragon's face and ears) that I wanted to show in the eventual circle, into the necessary part of the intervening square. And for the memory file, that involved, in IrfanView:

• load image (open folder) browse
• (too small , resize up =Ctrl+R or Image > Resize/Resample
• I only want his face, so Shift+C Create Custom Crop Selection size 256 x 256 *
• --repeat those steps until the original resize was such that the custom crop grabbed what I wanted.
• Saved that square (can't remember how)

* because:

"Microsoft recommends using an icon with a size of at least 256×256 pixels, to ensure it is properly displayed in the Large icons view"--Digital Citizen.

Next

1. Paint's dropper tool let me grab the exact colour I wanted, to create two squares that I could copy paste into:
2. Powerpoint where (thanks to Articulate 360 I now know how to convert them to circles with transparent backgrounds.
   
   
3. While I couldn't work out how to save both together still with a transparent background in Powerpoint, Kevin Stratvert showed how to remove a background from a picture with Paint3D.
   
   

Back to IrfanView,

• Edit Insert overlay/watermark image
• ... centre,
• 0% transparency gave me the effect I wanted

Next step back to Powerpoint to get another circle, but Powerpoint won't save it as an .ico.

So I went back to IrfanView to change the png to .ico, but the conversion seems to have left a jagged edge. Still ... I am super happy I have an ico that makes my desktop shortcut icon visually meaningful.

Update: I've since found the png-ico conversion is easier with ICOconvert recommended by Maraksot78 (video: How to Create Custom Desktop Icons (It's Easier than you Think)) (although as mine was just one image png to ico convert, as asked, I used the old ICOconvert homepage).  

When I look more at ICOconvert online it seems they also offer cropping and Styling which includes circles - so I wonder if the special shape styles come with transparency?  Maybe I'll try it out soon.  No hurry because I did try their tab for "Multiple PNGs to one ICO" but it had no upload mechanism.