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How To: Create and Sell Clip Art

Creating clip art can be a lot of fun and a great way to spruce up lesson resources for teacherspayteachers, not to mention an extra source of income. Here are a few quick tips to get you started.
How To Create & Sell Clip Art

  • Find a program: one that is easy to work with to make your clip art. PowerPoint is a good starting point. It's not fancy, it's free and easy to use. I have been using this since October 2012 to create my clip art images and am very happy with it. 
  • Decide on a Subject : Skim through magazines, Google images, or look out the window for your inspiration. Once you know what you want to create and you have your inspiration, get crackin'.
  • Design Only When Inspired: Just like in writing, I believe our best work comes when we are hit with inspiration. Those moments when you don't go looking for an idea but are suddenly struck with one produces the best creations. Carry a pen and paper around with you or jot down notes in your iPhone. 
  • Explore your program: fiddle around, just play until you create something you love. Google specific questions you might have. 
  • Learn the Tricks: Keyboard shortcuts are fast and save you time. For example:
    • ctrl A = Select All  - Useful when saving your image to a PNG file.
    • ctrl Z - Undo Last Move
  • Price to sell: If you are just starting to create, have a couple pieces for free or host a giveaway. You want to build up a following and create a reputation as a competent and creative graphic artist. Once you build a following, you can adjust pricing as needed. 
Do you make your own clip art? What program do you use? What tricks do you have to share?

40 comments:

  1. Hi there! I'm new to TPT and the whole world of endless possibilities I can share with others. I've already made a few .pdf items to share but am really interested in creating clipart. I've made a few samples with powerpoint and attempted to use Photoshop Elements. My biggest hurtle: how do I share the images with others through a site like TPT? Is there a specific way to convert the image or save it so that others can download and use? Any information to lead me in the right direction would be soo helpful! Thanks so much!

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    1. In Power Point, after creating your clipart, hit control A to select all, right click, Save As, and then save as a PNG. You can then upload this to TpT to sell as an individual piece of clip art. If you want to sell them in bulk you would do the same thing but place all of your PNGs in a folder, Select All, send to compressed zip folder. Does this make sense? I can write a post and go more in depth if you're interested.

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    2. My problem is that I create everything in Photoshop at 300 dpi. Which of course is mega in size. How do I reduce the clipart so that it's not too large to upload when creating bundles (and of course, not loose the quality)?

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    3. Good question! I'm wondering that, too. I think you would have to zip it and when ppl download, they have to unzip the file. That's what I'm guessing anyway.

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  2. Thank you for this post! I stumbled upon it on Pinterest. It's perfect, I'm starting to create my own clipart.

    Renee
    The Adventures of an Occasional Teacher

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    1. Thanks, Renee. And good luck!

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  3. Dear Miss. Whimsy,

    Thank you very, very much for your clipart advice. If you have a minute to answer, I have a few additional questions for you in regards to creating and selling clipart on TPT.

    1. What program do you use to create your clipart?

    2. Do you first draw and scan your clipart or do you create it through the program?

    3. Should I save my clipart as 300 dpi? If so, do you know if this is possible with PowerPoint?

    Thank you again for your generous advice and time.

    Debbie

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    1. Hi Debbie,
      I use PowerPoint to create my clip art and I create it completely through the program. I personally save my clip art as a PNG (portable network graphic) and this works great.

      Good luck!

      Miss. Whimsy

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    2. Hello! I am a one of the "original" clip art designers from 1989. I worked for MGI (Marketing Graphics Incorporated), a company who pioneered vector based clip art and we sold our clip art to Microsoft for use in their Microsoft Word clip art libraries. After moving on from that company, I designed an entire clip art library for Intuit software in the mid 90's. I made a lot of money. Clip art eventually saturated the market and prices for art dropped way down. I used, and still use CorelDraw! Back then Illustrator did not exist. My work was featured in "The CorelDRAW! Wow! Book." I have also won several awards of excellence in the CorelDRAW! world design contests. Those days are long gone and I have not sold any clip art to any companies since, however I still create my own images for logos and other marketing materials. I stumbled upon this thread and I am curious as to what companies you sell clip art to these days. I have expert knowledge of producing clip art in any format required. Vector based clip art is popular because it can be edited (providing you have a vector based drawing program such as Illustrator or Corel) I have hundreds of images I could sell, but have not really thought about it until I saw this thread. :-)

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    3. Try Shutterstock to sell images. I have a South African friend who live sin Asia, and he has found success creating and selling images on Shutterstock.
      Another option that would work great for you - Zazzle. In Zazzle, you can upload images and choose products that can be created using your images (tshirts, totes, mugs. etc). Zazzle gives you a cost list for each item. Then you choose what percentage profit you want, Zazzle creates the price from their base cost plus your profit. You basically create an online design store, but Zazzle does all the work (making product, mailing, etc). So you load you art and make $ as people create products with it.

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  4. Thank you so much! Do you save your clipart as 300 dpi?

    I really appreciate your help.

    Debbie

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  5. Thank you very much for all of your help and your time.

    Debbie

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  6. Hello Miss Whimsy! I was wondering if Illustrator would be ok to create clip art in. The program saves files as PNG.

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    1. Hmmm I'm not familiar with Illustrator but if you can save the image as a PNG you should be fine. Give it a shot and let me know how it goes. :)

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  7. If you know how to use Illustrator it would be a great program for clip art, vector image clip art is very popular because it can resize so drastically. For TPT probably nobody is going to use your clip art to put on say a bilboard, but if you wanted to be able to sell to that market as well it's a great idea.

    I was also wondering what dpi you save at. I don't work in power point so I'm not familiar with it's default settings. PNG is the file type. DPI is dots per inch (the quality at which the image will print) so your png files have a dpi number as well. From what I've seen elsewhere 300dpi or above is considered standard because otherwise you risk losing quality when somebody resizes your art or tries to print it.

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    1. Great question! I am not sure what DPI my PNG files are saved as... I will have to look into that.

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  8. Thank you so much for this information! I currently create materials and share them with my co-workers. It is difficult finding things that I can use in my class as I am public Montessori teacher....So I create a lot of my own. I am so grateful for your help.

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  9. I recently got a tablet for Christmas and I feel like I am artistic (ha!). How do you create your clip art? Do use use the auto shapes or are all of your clips hand drawn?

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    1. Sometimes I use the auto shapes. I find that it's easy to create animals, for example by using the shapes.

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  10. What size is the clipart image? Should it be a particular size?

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    1. Any clip art image you make can be adjustable. After you save it as a PNG, you can drag the corners to make it larger or smaller depending on your needs.

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  11. What tools do you use to "fiddle around, just play until you create something"? Didn't really see that in the post. Thanks

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    1. I use auto shapes and lines.

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  12. HI,
    I've read all of the comments and I'd like to clarify something. Powerpoint exports at 72dpi unless you change the registry. You can check the Properties of each picture and see how many pixels it is too. What I'm wondering is that you advertise at 300dpi on your TPT site..so how are you doing that if using power point. I have experimented with making my pages larger and exporting that way and it does create much higher dpi. have you discovered this trick? What do you use?

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    1. Hi Sandra,

      I'm not aware of where I advertise my images as 300 dpi- can you direct me to where you saw that? What I know is that I save them as PNG files and thought I advertised them as such.

      Thanks!

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  13. Hello Miss Whimsy!

    I would love to start making my own clip art images for my materials but I keep running into copyright/legality issues. Does power point have any of these issues regarding their shape templates? For examples, if I use their shapes to make a "person" or a smiley face, add this clip art to my materials, and then sell the materials on TpT or etsy, Do i need to ask permission from power point first? Or credit them in any way?

    Thanks so much!

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  14. Hi,

    I have hand draw images that I want to scan and create into clip art packages…do you know how to do that? I scanned a picture but couldn't figure out what to do from there….

    Thank You,

    cindy

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    1. I can create PNG's and even add white backings for tshirt or to use with laser etching. contact me if still interested, I know it's been a couple years since you posted here but I would love to see your work and see If I can sell it for you even! CrazyRealart@gmail.com Thanks much - Rich Hagen www.facebook.com/stoneblastart

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  15. A do also have some clip arts that aim did made by hand an not by computor or other staff and so on and also like to upload and sell it then, or there some way also can make also money off it.

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  16. How are you getting Power Point FREE? It is making me have OFFICE 365 to have it?

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  17. Replies
    1. You can begin with Insert - Shape - then draw a shape. Then Edit shape, fill with color, etc.... Once you get that down, there are many tools to take your images to the next level (including grouping objects, merging shapes, filling shapes with pictures/patterns included in PP or that you make or buy, etc.) Try starting with some online tutorials and Youtube videos.

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  18. This site is giving so much of information about PowerPoint.This information is very useful to us.
    Insert Picture from the Office ClipArt Collection in PowerPoint 2013.clip art powerpoint

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  19. If you are looking for clipart images or free clipart photos download black and white drawing for kids here are great free colection of clipart images gallery.



    clipartimage.net


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  20. How do you delete the back ground of an image? I am training to create translucent images. I only want the art to show...ie, I don't want a square image.

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