holy crap i made my own clipart

For my birthday, Derek gave me a Mac!!! My old laptop was a dinosaur. It sat in a sad corner and never got used because it took forever to do anything. I am so excited to have something more portable and functional. 

So yesterday, while writing progress reports, I needed a break. A sweet family gave me Pete the Cat and the Bedtime Blues for Christmas. After looking for a TPT book companion and coming up short, I decided to draw Pete. See above :) Definitely not perfect, but pretty cute. 

Then I got to wondering.....how can I make this into a clipart to make my own book companion? Not wanting to pay for photoshop, I searched free options. First, I downloaded GIMP. People highly recommended this program however my Mac was not happy about opening it. It acted like it was a security glitch every time, so I deleted and kept looking. 

Next I tried Pixlr. It's online, free and pretty easy to use paired with online tutorials. Here is how I made my cat....

STEP 1: I drew my cat and scanned it into my computer. 

STEP 2: Go to pixlr.com

STEP 3: Choose the Editor side. It looks like this: 

STEP 4: Choose Open Image From Computer. 

STEP 5: See your image? Choose the Magic Wand on the side bar. Click anywhere in the white space. It should start to look fuzzy and shaky. 

STEP 6: Go to Edit > Invert Selection. I'm honestly not sure what this does.....but click it. It won't look any different after you do. 

STEP 7: Go to Edit > Copy. Still won't look any different. 

STEP 8: Go to File > New Image. 

STEP 9: When the pop up box appears, make sure that the 2 check boxes are selected. Create image from clipboard and Transparent. They do something computer fancy when you select these. Just trust it. 

STEP 10: Your image should pop up on a new screen and have a checkered background. One tutorial suggest making the edges sharper using the eraser tool on the left. I just messed it up when I used the eraser so try it if you want! I think mine was fine without. I did end up cropping it because there was so much checkered space. Just crop like normal (Image > Crop). 

STEP 11: You are almost done! Now just go to File > Save. I saved it as a PNG. I think that it makes the background go all the way away so that you can layer it. Name it and click ok :) 

STEP 12: Pat yourself on the back and say "Holy crap! I made my own clipart!". Then make your husband bring you wine! 

I am still going to play with clipart. I hear that you can do black lines and then fill it in with the paint tool? I'm not sure. I literally drew this with a sharpie and markers. I think it probably gets easier the more you play with the program. I'll update if I find something awesome next time I use!