DIY Design #1: Using Clipart in Your Graphics

Clara and I are doing a series called DIY Design. You can read more about it in my previous post, but the main point of DIY Design is to help beginner bloggers with graphic design, and hopefully we’ll give some tips and ideas to the bloggers who have been blogging a while.Another thing real quick, I mention PicMonkey a lot in here and I LOVE using it for it’s easy-to-use format and amazing editing and design tools. That being said, unfortunately it isn’t free. I still think it’s worth it though! (Especially when you share your account and the costs with your sister. ;)) So if you want to go ahead and sign up for it I’d appreciate you using this link to do so, because PicMonkey gives me a bit when you do! 🙂

To start off DIY Design, I’m going to be giving you some pointers on how to use clipart in your designs and graphics. First I’ll be doing a tutorial on how to make clipart in Photoshop and PicMonkey.com.

While you can make clipart in PicMonkey, you can get a much smoother product in Photoshop, and it is also a lot faster. But one of the cons of using Photoshop to make your own clipart is that you can’t easily make clipart out of a picture with a cluttered background. In PicMonkey this doesn’t matter.

To create clipart in Photoshop, follow the steps below.

1. Open an image with a solid or mostly solid background.

2. In the layers panel, add a transparent background and drag it to the bottom of the list so that it becomes the background layer.

3. Click on the “Magic Wand Tool” and select the part you want to erase. Depending on how much shading is in the background, you may or may not have to turn up the tolerance of the Magic Wand Tool. You can do this by going to the spot where it says “Tolerance” up at the top.

4. Now just go to “Edit” up in the taskbar and click Delete. This will erase all the background that you selected, and should leave you with a gray and white checkerboard background. This means that the background is transparent. If you want, you can crop the image down to size.

5. Go to File and click Save. Your clipart is complete!

To create clipart in PicMonkey, follow the instructions below. This tutorial is very simple, but very time-consuming.

1. Go to PicMonkey.com and click “Design.” When your canvas loads, change the canvas color to transparent. (I left it white for the tutorial’s sake.)

2. Go to the Overlays section (click on the butterfly icon) and click “Add your own.” Select the picture you want for clipart.

3. Click on the Eraser tab in the Overlays box. Zoom up to the edge of your clipart subject and carefully erase the background. When you are satisfied with it, click Save.

Another neat way to use this tutorial is to turn your artwork into clipart. My example below was made with a watercolor flower that my sister painted.

Using Photo Clipart in Graphics
One way to use photo clipart is to put it over another photo. To make it look realistic though, you’re going to have to blur your background picture. To do this, I suggest using “Soften” in the Effects section. (If you have Royale though, I would use the Fancy Focus tool and make the focal size as small as possible. Drag the focus ring down to where you will be placing your clipart.) Then go to Overlays and click “Add your own”. Insert your clipart and position it how you want it. This doesn’t always look the most realistic, but if you combinr the right photos it can look really neat.

In the DIY Design poster (as well as this post’s poster) I used a graphic I made using a picture of a computer on a blank background. This lets me change up the featured images a bit and brings out a continuing theme in them.
If you soften a more realistic-looking background like this watercolor background, photo clipart can look neat with it.

I can also move the clipart around, flip it, and change the size of it.
Different Ways to Use Regular Clipart

You can find lots of free clipart around the internet. You can check out my Pinterest board where I’ve pinned some free graphics. In a few weeks Clara is going to do a post with some free photo sites and places to get free clipart.

If you want your graphics to have a modern look, then I’d leave everything straight (and mostly use text and geometric shapes). But for a more fun look, tilt your clipart around.

 

To tie your graphics into your clipart, match your font color with the color of your clipart. You can do this by selecting your font and clicking on the rectangle that shows the color of your font. Put the color dropper on the color you want and click. Voila! Your font color is changed. 🙂

What about those boring solid-colored graphics? Changing colors can look neat, but they still look pretty flat.

To add some texture to your clipart, change it’s color to black and put it on a solid white background. Then go to “Add your own” and select the texture you want. I like to use watercolor backgrounds a lot, it makes it look more like it was painted. Drag it over top of the clipart so that it covers it, and then click on the drop down under “Blend modes”. Click on “lighten”.

Remember to check clarascraftcorner.com next week to read her post on fonts! To see the complete schedule go to my previous post.

What are some ways you like to use clipart?

Have you made your own clipart before?