Disclosure: This post and the photos and video within it may contain Amazon or other affiliate links. If you purchase something through these links, I may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. The paper and dies used in this post were provided by Scrapbook.com in exchange for design work. Thank you!
Are you interested in a walkthrough of how to find, download, size, and print graphics for cardmaking from Creative Fabrica? Let me show you how in this Creative Fabrica tutorial.
I love to use printed images from Creative Fabrica in my cardmaking. It can save a bunch of time, you can find the perfect image for your project, you can print as many as you want, and you can skip the coloring phase if you’d like. You can check out cards that feature images from Creative Fabrica here and here. Also I am a Creative Fabrica affiliate so I appreciate you clicking my links to support me at no extra cost to you while getting your cute images.
Finding Images
To get started you need to navigate to creativefabrica.com. Make it easy for yourself and help me out by just clicking this affiliate link.
Once you are there you can choose many crafty options from fonts, to SVGs, to embroidery designs. But today I’m going to focus on printing images for use in cardmaking. So you’ll want to search within the graphics category. Let’s give it a try for free today by going to the freebies option at the top right which will give you a drop down menu. Choose “Free Graphics”
Scroll through the many, many free options until you find something you like. For this tutorial, I chose Watercolor Frozen Sweets by ValinMalin. These will make some cute winter cards. When you click the design it will open the page for this specific design.
Downloading Images
There should be a large green download button for freebies. For paid items you will need to proceed through check out but after check out the process will be the same once again.
At this point in the tutorial you will see I’ve started to block out sections of images to protect my privacy and the intellectual property of the designer of these images. The black and white boxes won’t appear for you. Also I only have a Mac operating system so things will look very slightly different for PC, but the options will be similar.
Once you click download, it should give you the ability to pick a place to save your files. If it doesn’t you probably have a default folder chosen and it’s likely called ‘Downloads.’ You should be able to find the downloads folder on your computer by opening Finder on Mac or My Computer/This PC on Windows. If you are having trouble, do a web search for “Find my downloads on Mac” or “Find my downloads on Windows” and you should be able to get an answer. At this point, you can rename the file if you’d like. You can also keep things a bit more organized by creating special folders on your computer.
Then you need to open the folder where you saved your file. Sometimes the downloads will appear on the bottom of your web browser and you can simply click that. The folder will likely be ‘zipped.’ Usually you will need to simply double click the ‘zipped’ file to ‘unzip’ it. After it is ‘unzipped’ it should appear as a normal folder on your computer.
Printing Images
Double click the ‘unzipped’ folder to open it and see all the images. Choose the image you want to use and copy it. You can copy it by using the Mac Command-C shortcut or the Windows Control-C shortcut. You can also use a Windows right click or Mac double click to open a menu and choose ‘copy’.
Next you will need to open a word processing document. No matter what system you use, you can open a Google Doc by navigating to docs.google.com on your web browser. You can also use Word on Windows or Pages on a Mac. Once you have a blank document, you can paste your image. You can paste it by using the Mac Command-V shortcut or the Windows Control-V shortcut. You can also use a Windows right click or Mac double click to open a menu and choose ‘paste’.
You will likely want to resize your image. Drag the corners on the image to resize the image. Use the rulers on the edges of the document to get an idea of what size it will print out as.
In the example you can see my image is about 2 inches by 4 inches. This will be a great size for most cards.
Now I can copy this resized image and paste as many as I want to fill my page. I can also add additional images to the document until a page is full. Once a page is full you can print.
You can go to the ‘File’ option at the top of the page and navigate down to the print option. You will need a color printer to print your images. I have an Epson EcoTank 8500 that I have been very happy with and I will link that down below. If you don’t have a color printer, many community libraries and office supply stores will. You may not be able to print on cardstock at the library though, but most office supply or print shops should offer that option. I use Pen and Gear 110lb index card stock purchased from Walmart but you will need to find out what works best for your printer. You may also need to change your printer settings to accommodate the thicker card stock.
Final Thoughts
I hope you found the tutorial helpful and were able to successfully download and print some images to use on your cards. If you have any further questions please feel free to ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer as time allows. Please bookmark this page or add the graphic below to a Pinterest board for future reference.
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