I'm shocking myself a bit with this post, because while art, design, and writing are my areas of expertise, technology and math are not!
Nonetheless, this morning I was able to make printable valentines for my son to pass out at school, and it didn't cost me anything.
My son got this DK Eyewitness book as a gift this past year.
It came with a Clip-Art CD, but until now we haven't used it at all.
He has been asked to write out a valentine to each member of his class, and he wasn't looking forward to it (or anything resembling homework). I figured if I could make some valentines he'd like, he might be less resistant to getting this project done.
So I sent him off to school, got out the book and CD, and got to work experimenting. We use Open Office's free software (find it here) not Microsoft Word, so if that's what you have, this process may differ slightly, but you should still be able to do it.
I opened Open Office, and when it asked me to choose a format (spreadsheet, word document, etc.) I chose "Drawing."
Once I was in the document, I went up the "File" tab, and clicked, "Open."
I chose the CD as the source to open, picked a clip-art file, and boom - it showed up on my page!! Yes, people, this is exciting for me. Stop laughing. Really.
I found the option to shrink the art to a size where I could fit three of them on a page, and then copied and pasted it twice to give me three valentines on one 8x11 page.
I added text that went with my airplane theme. Ahem, "You MACH me happy!" Not too girly or anything, so my 2nd grader would be cool with handing them out.
I added a To and a From line, so he can write in his name and his classmates names.
Copied and pasted those twice and printed out my creation.... and it worked!!!
I will probably go print them on cardstock at Staples for a few bucks, and staple it to whatever goodie we end up handing out.
I am so pumped that I was able to use something we already had to make a valentine for my kiddo!
These books are pretty popular, so if you have one, go find it and start playing. You can also find them here.
Happy Valentine's Day!
XO,
Anne
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