Operation Organization: Clip Art

In the last year my clip art, frames, and background collection has grown. Exponentially. It's been fun to make things for my students, but sometimes in the midst of creating things for my classroom, I can't seem to remember if I have a certain piece of clip art, or I can't find the border I've been thinking of, and sometimes I forget the terms of use and spend extra time to make sure I have everything correct.

Until now. (Hopefully). 

Sometimes, I have O.C.D tendencies. Usually at the most inopportune times. Last week, in the midst of the messiest week of my classroom (nothing like procrastinating on art projects) and finals week for my grad classes, I decided it would be the best time to organize my growing clip art collection.

Most of my clip art was previously stored in a folder, with clip art separated into subdivided by clip art artist. Until I was a wee bit lazy and didn't always separate things out. Even then, it was hard to remember all of the individual items.

This time, I opened finder (on my Mac; a window with documents open on a PC should work too) as well as PowerPoint. For each slide, I put the artist at the top, the terms of use at the bottom, and images of the clip art. I found that I really, really, really enjoy preview images when they are included. Other wise I'd pull over several samples and leave a note as to how many colors or variations. As I was going along, I made sure that the artist names at the top of page coincided with the folders I have my clip art stored in.

This document can be printed off... but for now I like being able to have it pulled up along with a new document and just create away with the ability to see what all I can choose from in one spot, as well as the ability to copy and paste credit information.

I'm hoping this will be useful and keep me organized as my addiction collection grows!