Clip art can be a fabulous way to personalize cards and gifts. How? Read on and learn eight great reasons to have clip art on hand.
Eight terrific ways to use clip art
1. Greeting cards
2. Bookmarks
3. Invitations
4. Flyers & Business Cards
5. Scrapbooking
6. Decoupage
7. Enlarge it and use it as a coloring page for kids.
8. Dress up your Word documents with it.
Greeting Cards
Using clip art is a fun and rewarding way to make personalized greeting cards. You can create your card on the computer using Word, Photoshop, Illustrator, Paint, or any other program. Or, you can create a card by hand by cutting out a clip art image and gluing it onto a folded card or card blank. You can hand color your image using watercolor, ink, or colored pencils. Add some other doodles and/or decorations and you’ve got an original and totally personalized greeting card.
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| Clip Art used for greeting card, copyright Sara Light-Waller, 2011 |
Bookmarks
Bookmarks make great giveaway gifts. Using techniques similar to the greeting cards suggestions above you can create personalized bookmarks to share with friends and family. You can even make collectible ones and trade them between friends.
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| Clip art used for bookmarks, copyright Sara Light-Waller, 2011 |
Invitations
Some clip art really lends itself to invitations. Making a hand-made invitation can be extremely easy to do. Start by typing up your event information in Word and then add an appropriate illustration to the bottom corner. An easy way to make a very personalized invitation.
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| Victorian Image from Dover clip art book |
Flyers & Business Cards
When creating a simple business flyer
or a business card it is not always necessary to ask your designer to produce or procure artwork for you. Many times clip art will work splendidly.
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| Dover clip art used to create business flyer |
Scrapbooking
Scrapbooking always requires a lot of photos but sometimes you want to illustrate a specific event with another sort of picture. Whether you need an image of a baseball player for a Little League page, or a set of balloons for a girl’s birthday party page, having a few pieces of clip art on hand can be just the ticket.
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| Clip art image from Dover clip art book |
Decoupage
Decoupage is a perfect use for clip art. There are a great many clip art books available with wonderful color clip art in various themes ready for any sort of decoupage project.
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| Clip art image from Dover clip art book |
Enlarge it and use it as a coloring page for kids
Many times clip art can be enlarged on your computer or at a copy shop and then used as a coloring page for kids. Think of it! An ongoing supply of low cost coloring pages!
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Dress up your Word documents with it
We use Word for so many things nowadays but most of the time we write our documents without pictures. Why not add some clip art to spruce up a personal letter? If you’re writing a professional document you can also use clip art (only appropriate images, of course!) to create a professional logo or letterhead.
Clip art used in a document can be as simple as a small image of a heart or it can be much more complex, like an image that fits with the name of your business. (I use a cartoon image of a small pegasus for my business Flying Pony Studios.)
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| Flying Pony Studios logo. Copyright Sara Light-Waller, 2011 |
Where to get clip art
Dover Publications is probably the best known source of books on a wide variety of clip art subjects. You can find them at the
Dover website.
Get some FREE Clip Art
Join my mailing list and download four pieces of professional clip art for your use. Go to www.flyingponystudios.com to get your free clip art today.
If you have a specific desire for a piece of clip art but you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can commission me to make it for you. You can see prices for "line illustrations" here.
Have fun expanding your creative experience with clip art!
