Free Clip Art from Vintage Holiday Crafts

Free Vintage Kids Valentine Cards

Holiday Crafts — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:33:25 +0000

I absolutely love these colorful vintage kids Valentine cards. They come from different eras but seem to be mostly from the mid-20th century.

Some of the expressions on these cards aren’t heard much these days. An example is the sock saying “‘Darn’ it.” People still say “darn it,” of course, just not in reference to sewing up holes in their socks. I’m sure many of the crafters who visit this site will know what darning is, but how many people actually darn their socks any more? Arcane references like that are part of what makes these cards charming. Also cute is the fact that the people who created these kids valentine cards had no fear of being corny, because the designs were aimed at children. So this is your opportunity to be as corny as you want this Valentine’s Day; just blame it on the art.

Click one of the free vintage kids Valentine cards below to view and download a larger version (enlarged sizes vary):

Other free Valentine’s Day art:

Like what you see? Please help others find our free Valentine’s Day cards by linking to us from your blog or Web site.

Vintage Art: Free Printable Birthday Cards

Holiday Crafts — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:47:48 +0000

When it comes to honoring a birthday, you can’t beat these vintage free printable birthday cards. Not that there’s anything wrong with modern birthday card designs; they’re great. But sometimes it’s just nice to summon up the feeling of yesteryear.

These cards convey both an elegance and a sense of whimsy, which I’m sure will be appreciated by the recipients. And to make them even more special, try adding just a touch of glitter glue to embellish them. But don’t use a lot or the card stock might warp and the colors might run. You don’t need much to achieve a nice effect anyway. Just small dabs on highlighted areas can make a big difference.

However you embellish them, or even if you don’t, I hope you enjoy these free printable birthday cards. And if you’re in the market for birthday party favors and decorations to go along with a card, click the link in this sentence. They have some fun stuff, some of which can be incorporated into craft projects!

Just click one of the free vintage birthday cards image below to view and download the larger version:

Click for more vintage birthday cards

Free Clip Art: Vintage Roses

Holiday Crafts — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:45:32 +0000

It’s summertime as I write this, so the flowers are in bloom. The vintage roses below, however, are always in bloom — even though most are decades old. These beautiful vintage free clip art roses span from the Victorian era to the mid-twentieth century, and they’re just as beautiful now as the day they were created.

If you love flowers (and who doesn’t?), you might also enjoy our collection of beautiful assorted vintage flowers. See our vintage angels and cherubs too! And if you’re here looking at these vintage roses for an upcoming nuptial, check out these unique wedding favors. I think you’ll love their huge selection. They also have plenty of items that can be incorporated into DIY wedding favors, decorations and crafts.

Click an image below to view and download a larger version (enlarged sizes vary):

See our contemporary wedding clipart, modern flower clipart and vintage bridal shower ideas.

free vintage flowers and seed packets" />

Like what you see? Please help others find our free vintage clip art and greeting cards by linking to us from your blog or Web site.

Free Vintage Christmas Clip Art Images

Holiday Crafts — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:36:14 +0000

I love vintage Christmas clip art, and from my experience so do a lot of other people. These nine free vintage clip art images are particularly nice, in my opinion. Not only are they fine examples of authentic vintage Christmas art but they’re also large-sized, which means you can use them for far more than just the web.

People who prefer a more religious or spiritual slant to their Christmas images should appreciate these, as their are several that depict the baby Jesus in the manger with angels. There are also angels by themselves; two of them even look like they’re delivering a Christmas tree. Speaking of Christmas trees, there is also an image of Victorian children playing with their toys beneath one, and a woman carrying one in miniature. Together these form a nice collection that I’m sure you’ll find useful for Web sites, blogs, handmade Christmas cards, scrapbooking and other crafts.

To see and download larger versions of the free images, just click on the images below (enlarged sizes vary)

As I look at these illustrations, I have to wonder how many different artists are represented. If you look closely, the style of each image is a little different. When you think about how many vintage images are on this site or out on the Internet, they must represent a huge number of talented people. Unfortunately, these people go mostly unnoticed.

The same could probably be said for modern greeting card and clip art artists. They do what they do for pay, because the electric bill needs to be paid — no matter how talented they are. Some of today’s artists might even have huge portfolios of outstanding images, yet you’ll never know their names. So here’s to the unsung artists who enrich our lives silently every day. With any luck they enjoy their work and so will continue to give us images that will become the next millennium’s vintage art. And if you know artists who toil in obscurity, be sure to give them liberal praise. You just might be encouraging tomorrow’s masterpieces.

You might also be interested in these other images:

We also have some colorful contemporary Hanukkah clip art. And let’s not forget New Year’s! Check out our free vintage New Year cards, vintage New Year clip art and contemporary New Year’s Eve clip art.

Free Vintage Pink Rose Scrapbook Paper

Holiday Crafts — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:28:21 +0000

Here are some old-timey-looking free vintage rose scrapbook papers and a coordinating stripe design that I hope you’ll enjoy using. The pink rose I used to create the designs (pictured at right) comes from Vintagerio, which has an insanely large collection of vintage roses and other flowers that I’ve featured on this site and some of the pages linked from the sidebars. By the way, if you click on the rose art to the right, you’ll find a lovely large-sized version you’re free to use.

Speaking of the the sidebars, you can see from looking at them that I’ve been playing with designing scrapbook papers for a while now. Creating them is the perfect hobby for me, since I love vintage art and clip art in general. Working on the designs has allowed me to justify spending hours looking at beautiful artwork and it’s definitely art therapy for me. I hope my therapy will benefit you as well when you make something pretty from these or my other vintage flower scrapbook papers!

To see and download larger versions of the free vintage rose scrapbook papers, just click on the images below (enlarged sizes vary):

By the way, these vintage roses reminded me of wallpaper I once had. In fact, a lot of paper craft designs could translate well to walls. I wonder how many scrapbook paper designers actually move onto designing wallpaper — and vice versa. The scale may be different but the principles are the same: a repeat pattern is usually involved and the colors have to be easy on the eyes. That second aspect is obviously more important with wallpaper. You can always shut a scrapbook and put it in a drawer so no one sees it. But once a paper design is applied in the form of paper designs for walls, it’s there until you go through some considerable work to take it down. No one wants to look at obnoxious walls for years on end! That puts some pressure on the artists but even more so on the homeowner. I always used to get so stressed out when picking out wallpaper designs. As a result nowadays I just stick to painting the walls and playing with scrapbook paper designs on my computer! There’s much less margin for error.

Like what you see? Please help others find more free vintage scrapbook papers, plus all the rest of our free vintage clip art and greeting cards by linking to us from your blog or Web site.

Free Vintage Children Clip Art

Holiday Crafts — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:07:27 +0000

It wasn’t until I posted all the free vintage children clip art images on this page that I realized all but one features flowers in some way. Once I noticed that, I looked at the rest of my vintage children clip art images and found that almost every one of them has some sort of floral theme. Apparently it used to be popular for children to sell flowers, because there are a disproportionate number of vintage clip art images in my collection that look like the kids are geared up to go out on the street and sell. You see one example of that in the image of the little boy selling violets.

There are also a disproportionate number of fair-skinned children. I included the one suitable African American children clip art image I had but as you can see, the image is presented quite differently than the others. No flowers, fancy clothes or elegant poses for those boys. You can clearly see the difference in racial perception that was so prevalent at the time these vintage clip art images were created. Not that there’s anything wrong with the image of the four boys; it’s cute. It’s just that it’s a grittier portrayal than found in the fair-skinned children clip art images.

Thankfully, today we see images of children of all colors together as equals in advertising and other forms of public imagery. That means the next generation of vintage art will more accurately reflect the fact that we live on a diverse planet.

To see and download larger versions of the free vintage children clip art, just click on the images below (enlarged sizes vary):

Update: This post has been up for four months now and I have seen these images of children popping up all over the Internet on the blogs of creative people — mostly women — who do any number of crafts. Although it’s not surprising, it’s interesting to see how much these creative women resonate with images of children. I love children, too, and see myself as a crafty sort, so I feel like I have a lot in common with all these women I’ve never met.

When I actually cross paths with some of them who write to me to ask about particular images or permission for use, I find there are a lot of kind souls out there in the crafting community. That has been great for me, because I also run across a lot of people into making money online in other ways who aren’t so nice. Frankly, I find some of them a little hard to take.

I’ve always maintained that you can make money doing what you love. Granted, some of the people who make money online make a lot more money than I do. But I’ve tried a lot of those methods and they don’t work for me. What does work for me is to give value to other people and to also use my creativity. In short, I’m true to my nature. I did have to study quite a bit to understand how to incorporate my talent with online practices that would produce money. But no matter how much I learned or how many techniques I tried, I’ve always come back to the fact that I’m an artist and a writer and I need to honor that to succeed. Hence, the vast collection of clip art and scrapbooking resources you see on this site and in the pages linked from the sidebars. I hope you enjoy using these resources as much as I enjoy bringing them to you!

Like what you see? Please help others find more vintage children clip art, plus all the rest of our free vintage clip art and greeting cards by linking to us from your blog or Web site.