It is reassuring and motivating to see important dates highlighted on a
calendar. It can remind you to work hard, to prepare or can reassure you
that a vacation is coming. To make the date especially eye catching you
can customize your calendar with clip art. Creating clip art is not
difficult; you don't need to be a great artist or be computer savvy.
Sketch your clip art image, scan it to the computer and bring it to life
with computer software.
Instructions
- Paper
- Pencil
- Scanner
- Photo editor software
- Printer
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1
Sketch your clip art image to a
piece of paper with a pencil. You don't need to worry about the size of
your image, that can be adjusted in the computer. Be sure all the lines
in the image connect.
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2
Scan your image into the
computer using a scanner. Make sure all the lines appear on the scanned
image and, if they don't, make the lines darker and re-scan. Save the
image to your computer as a ".jpg" or ".gif" file type.
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3
Open your photo editing
software. Click "File" in the upper left hand corner, scroll down the
menu and click "Open File." Click on your scanned image to open it.
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4
Select the pencil tool and go
over the lines on your sketch to make them darker. If you mess up
tracing the lines click the "Undo" button to remove the error and try
again. You can select the width of the line you are drawing by selecting
a larger gauge in the menu options.
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5
Select an area to fill with
color that is enclosed by lines. Choose color and the paint drop tool,
often times this tool's icon looks like a tipped over bucket of paint,
and click the icon into the space to be colored. Repeat this process
until your clip art is filled with color.
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6
Save your clip art image. Click
"File" in the upper left hand corner and click "Save" in the drop down
menu. Type in a name for the file when prompted that will be easy to
remember.
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7
Open Microsoft Word by clicking
the Word icon. Click "File" in the upper left hand corner and select
"New" from the drop-down menu. Select the icon of a calendar.
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8
Double click the area on the
calendar where you would like to insert you clip art. Click the "Insert"
tab in the top toolbar, then click the "Picture" icon. Find your saved
image, highlight the file by clicking on it then click "Open."
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9
Hold down the left click button
on the edge of the image and drag it across more than one day on the
calendar; this will stretch or shrink the image. If you notice that this
warps the calendar you will have to change the text wrapping settings.
Right click the image, select "Text Wrapping" in the pop-up menu and
choose either "In Front of Text" or "Through" depending on your taste.
Return to the calendar and stretch the image to overlap multiple days.
