Clipart is a fun way to add color, pictures and designs to both work and home files. They are simply added into an existing or new file and some basics can usually be found already on your computer, e.g. in the Word program.

What is Clipart?

Clip art is a blanket term for the many styles of images used in printed computer documents. It usually refers to content that has been specifically created for use on the web or with a computer program. This can include graphics, photographs, backgrounds and cartoons.

Animated clip art is only differentiated by the fact that it involves moving images that can be inserted into documents and web pages.

Where to find clip art?

If you have a Microsoft Word program (or similar) it is highly likely that you will already have access to many clip art images. Look for the clip art option in your toolbar. Clicking on it brings up another window which allows you to search for a particular image.

Using Microsoft's dedicated clip art page and searching with the word 'birthday' resulted in 516 different images. There are many categories and more than 150,000 sounds and images on the Microsoft clip art site which can be found here.

#1 Free Clip Art is a great resource. They have over 10,000 free graphics which are sorted into 300 categories. Clicking on the category 'Holiday' gives access to sub-categories for Christmas, Halloween, Eater, Valentines and others. Halloween has a further 6 pages of great graphics which are both colorful and original.

Clker.com has a truly amazing selection of royalty free clip art. This is vector clip art. Sometimes you need to stretch an image to fit a space and the image can distort. This does not happen if you use vector clip art.

The front page is split into three sections, recently added, most used in the last two weeks and most used ever. The categories contain some of the most original clip art and if you can't find it here you probably can't find it at all. A search for the term 'eggs' returned 91 different images relating to eggs which is superb.

The final and excellent resource is free-clip-art.com. There are thirteen different categories on the homepage. There are many original and good quality graphics on the site but there is a secondary advantage.

The main page contains clickable links to several related websites where yet more clip art can be found. Interestingly, these include one to Clip Art Press which is a clip art blog containing many tips and ideas for crafting using clip art.

Clip art can add the finishing touch to a work presentation. It can provide images for printing invitations, cards and homework projects at home. Clip art can brighten virtually any document or web page and these sites will help you whether you are a beginner or an expert.

Learn more about this author, Gillian Taber.
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