By Nancy Buchanan, for Office at home

---

• Plot your strategy

• Browse for clip art

• Personalize the clip art

• Use your imagination

---

We refer to our family’s refrigerator as our Refrigerator of Art. That’s because it is so much more than just a place to chill the ingredients for the next meal; it is the place to display the latest artwork and accomplishments from our children and extended family. Our Refrigerator of Art is cooler with the addition of embellishments made using Microsoft Office Word, clip art, digital pictures, and sheets of magnetic paper from my local office supply store, as illustrated here:

A page of artwork ready to print on magnetic paper. View a larger image.

 Top of Page

Plot your strategy

Begin by collecting all of the artwork, awards, school work, and report cards that are display-worthy. You may have to prioritize what to post. Unless you have a restaurant-sized refrigerator, there may not be enough room for all you want to display. Or maybe you too have two golden retrievers and a chihuahua that knock things within their reach down, so you need to place your treasures out of their way.

 Note   You should also make sure your refrigerator is made of magnetic material. A friend of mine has a refrigerator nothing sticks to but her kids’ fingerprints. She purchased a thin sheet of stainless steel and had it mounted to the front of her refrigerator.

 Top of Page

Browse for clip art

I browse for clip art from Microsoft Office Word. I just click Clip Art on the Insert menu, and then start typing search terms in the Search for box, as illustrated here:

Clip Art task pane.

To make the magnets of my children with my girls in flowers and my boys in insects, I search for “daisy” or “flower.” After clip art appears in the task pane, click it to insert it into the Word document. I usually insert many more images than I will need, and later decide what will make the final product. I look for clip art that has an area I could insert a digital image into. For this project that means the center of flowers for my girls, and the faces of bugs for my boys.

 Tip   Clip art with dark edges or outlines really “pops” against all of the colors you will be posting on your refrigerator.

 Top of Page

Personalize the clip art

After you have inserted clip art you want to personalize into a Word document, you can have fun making it your own. For example, here I turned a clip art flower into a personalized clip art flower with my daughter’s school photo in it, as shown here:

Clip art before and after personalization.

1. Insert your digital photo. Click where you want to insert the photo and then click Picture on the Insert menu.
2. Crop your photo. Click on the photo and then use the Crop tool to get rid of the areas you do not want to include.

    Note   All of the pictures of my children came from one photo. I just inserted the photo four times (one for each child), then used the tools in Microsoft Office Word to create separate circles for each child that would later go on top of the clip art.

   Picture before cropping and after cropping.

3. Change the picture’s shape. One of my favorite features in Word 2007 is the Picture Shape tool. Click an image and then click Picture Shape on the Format menu to change your picture from a rectangular shape to the shape you want. I used the Oval shape for the pictures in my project.
4. Adjust the brightness. You may not need to take this step, but my digital pictures always seem a bit dark so I use the Brightness tool to make them a bit lighter. I simply click Brightness on the Format menu and then add 10% or 20% brightness.
5. Add a border. I have a penchant for clip art with dark edges (like in comic strips), so I always add a matching border to my photos. I just click Picture Border on the Format menu, and then click the desired color and border width.

   Picture before and after adjusting brightness, changing the shape, and adding a border.

6. Adjust the size. At this point you will be able to see if your photo is too big or too small for the clip art you plan to use. Click the picture edge and then drag that edge to make the picture smaller or larger.
7. Change the position. Use the Position tool to free up the photo so that it can float on a layer on top of the clip art. Just click Position on the Format menu, then click More Layout Options, and then click In front of text. Now you can click and drag your photo to be on top of the clip art.
8. Fill up your page. I use Copy (CTRL+C) and Paste (CTRL+V) to insert as many of my personalized clip art items onto one page as I can fit. I do this to squeeze as many images onto one magnetic sheet as I can. I also add text where there isn’t room for images (such as “wow!” and “hooray!”) to maximize how much I can get from one magnetic sheet.
9. Print your magnets. We live in a rural area, and both our local crafts store and our local office supply story carry boxes with sheets of magnetic paper you can insert into your computer’s paper tray and then print on. Refer to the instructions with the magnetic paper to find out what settings to use on your printer. Using the high-quality color setting is recommended.
10. Cut and place. After the ink is dry on your magnet sheets, carefully cut out your magnets and then have fun placing them on your refrigerator!

 Tip   To put every bit of the magnetic sheets to good use, use the leftover tidbits for smaller shapes and have your kids color them with permanent markers.

 Top of Page

Use your imagination

This article has covered just a few ideas for how you can really dress up your refrigerator and make it a focal point in your kitchen instead of a jumble of papers. You can use these same ideas to create magnetic picture frames for your refrigerator (trying searching clip art for the word “frame”) or you can use different materials such as printer-ready sticky notes. Let your imagination go wild — after all, refrigerator decorating is an art, not a science.

 Top of Page