Chalking Clip Art: Create Your Own Specialty Die-Cuts

Need a page embellishment? Want to choose your own image from thousands of images that you probably already have at hand? Want it to all be fast and simple? AND do you want it to be in YOUR choice of colors?

You are in luck! Whether your favorite color palette favors Mary Engelbreit primaries, heritage jewel tones, Martha Stewart pastels, or Native earth tones, you can make any page art to suit your taste. Sound too wonderful to be possible? Yes, you can have terrific full color die cuts of ANY object in the world of clip art for only pennies. And it will only take about 5 to 10 minutes of your time per image. Even if you are not a computer whiz, you can do this!

Use your favorite computer print shop clip art or free online clip art to create your page embellishments! No, I don't mean boring black and white clip art! I mean creating full color clip art in your choice of colors! Tired of coloring for hours with brush markers and then the ink bleeds? The solution is coloring your clip art with chalks! Chalking is so fast! And the clip art is probably already in your computer in a print shop you already own!

figure 1- supplies

I start the process by deciding on what type of clip art I need. For an upcoming swap I want to do a house embellishment. I go to my favorite print shop program on my home computer and I follow their directions to start a poster sized page (8.5x11). I then search that program's clip art archive directory for a piece of clip art that I like. In this case it is a house shape.

I want to chalk in the image with my choice of colors...not just cut out a preprinted color clip. I use a chalk set that has 24 colors of chalk and that usually gives me plenty of choice for my clip art work. I generally pick black and white clip art images at this point for this particular technique. They may look a little more boring on the screen than one already colored in...but they do work better for chalking. Check your own print shop for the added feature of being able to change a pre-colored clip back to black and white image. You then get to choose what colors YOU prefer!

figure 3-change colors to b/w

figure 3a-then use your choice of chalks

The beauty of this is that you can also pick what color cardstock to print the clip art onto for coordinating page embellishments. You can print one clip or many per page of cardstock depending on your needs. I printed the black and white clip house on several colors of cardstock for my use because I wanted multiples for a swap.

figure 4- different color cardstock houses

You can choose several clip art pictures to fit on a printout if you like to save paper and time. Here I have printed many flowers in many sizes to be chalked and used later. This is an efficient use of the paper and I will always use the extras--even if it is just to trade.

figure 5-flowers sheet

Sometimes a piece of clip art has too many images or parts. Then you just follow your print shop's directions for editing and cutting out the ones you do not want. From figure 5, I decided to chalk just the three photo corners shown here.

figure 6

Once you have chosen the clip art and sized as you like it in your print shop program, you can decide on a cardstock color for the printout. Plain white paper is good if you want to add a lot of colors to the main clip art. Here is one house printed on white paper and colored in step by step with my choice of chalks. Even though it has a lot of color it still only took me about three to five minutes to complete. Chalks are so quick! And it has all the RIGHT colors for my layout--not what someone else chose!

figure 7- houses

Don't just stick with white paper though! Use a colored cardstock for a subtle --and even quicker-- embellishment. Animals are especially good to print on colored cardstock. It saves you having to chalk in all the base color of the animal. All you have to do is add the shadowing and perhaps a few accent colors. Here you can see on the second bunny how the shadowing is done with a shade of tan/brown chalk and a q-tip.
Simply go over every line printed in black with a q tip or makeup applicator dipped in chalk to add the shadowing. Press the chalk down and 'draw' over the black lines with the chalk. Use short strokes and 'smudge' it down a bit to blend the color onto the paper. The chalk will show a bit on both sides of the original black clip art line. That is good! Don't try to keep chalk within the clip art lines too fastidiously. The smudgey look is part of the charm of chalk. Generally shadowing a clip art takes less than ONE minute! Now that is FAST!

figure 8-bunny

If you make a mistake chalking and want to remove color, simply erase the excess with a white eraser. Do not press too hard with the eraser. Most of the chalk is not that deeply embedded in the paper. Erase lightly and it will preserve the clip art to be re-chalked. Now, start over with the chalk. Touch ups as well as major changes can both be handled in this simple manner.

figure 12-tone on tone houses

Tone on tone shadowing is the simplest chalking and takes literally minutes. Above I have chalked five houses-- each in a tone darker than the cardstock they were printed upon.

fig 9 - bear

After you shadow your clip art, you may want to go further and highlight it with two or three strokes of white chalk or white pencil as I have done here with the bear in figure 8 and the grass in figure 13c. Highlighting goes in areas that are raised up in height, catch more light, or are closer to you.

fig. 10-bookcase

Adding more than one chalk color to your clip art is as easy as a few more chalk strokes! It takes only seconds to add each new color. I love the speed of chalking! Here I have done a bookcase and a calico cat.


fig. 11 calico cat

Finally, cut out the clip art with decorative or plain scissors and add it to your page. Clip art can be cut with a normal straight scissors. But for all my animals, I use the deckle scissors! It adds so much dimension for the fur effect!

13b

Don't be afraid to try other mediums to help dress up the clip art as well. Liquid appliqué pens, metallic rub-on creams, cording, and glitter will add a special glimmer to clip art such as this angel. Here is the before and after photo for our angelic page addition.

fig 15 angel embellished

Pages aren't done until they are titled and journaled. Why not use the chalks to spruce up your titles and journaling too? You can either chalk individual letters of text (figure 16) or chalk 'behind' whole words (figure 17). This gives a harmonious look to the chalked page. And again, it takes only seconds to make the plain black text jump off the page!

fig 16

fig 17

No matter what the particular theme or size embellishment you need, check your clip art files, fire up the printer, and grab your chalks! In mere minutes, you can complete wonderful pages like these!

figure 13c