Clip Art Books

This book of clip art will not disapoint. If you are looking for classic and classy vintage clip art from the 20s and 30s - this is a great source. The images are clean and there are tons to choose from. I highly recommend.

Many of the images are poor quality, and can't be used for my purposes. Oh well.

its funny to see all the ads of the past. they're so very different from ads now. it just kind of makes you think how society has changed just by looking at the ads. definitely, if u need something interesting to do, read this book.

This book is just very interesting and helpful. It was also fun to read and just flip through. I even got my friends to flip through it!

not so much imagery as i had hoped. most of the designs are that of rugs and not of actual knots and different designs. and there arent many images. the book is thin, and didnt give me a lot to go on since i am using it for tattoo designs.

Just an aside comment on the above review...Courtney Davis is actually a guy, not a gal. He's really nice and a very considerate person who loves his art, check it out if you get a chance!

If you haven't seen the Courtney Davis celtic tshirts you may not know who she is. If you have, you probably own several, and already know to get this book. You may even have some and not realize it, many examples of her work are sold at Celtic fairs. The designs in the book are clear and good, can be used (with a little work with scizzors, transfer pencils and plastic sheets) for either stencil, embroidery, a background for the paint-on stained glass decals, or scanned in for any purpose you would like.

It's definitely a book to buy if you are building your celtic crafts collection.

These stencils are great! I have used them to decorate a cake, for glass etching and in my classroom for my students to make stationary. I am still finding uses for these wonderful stencils.

I've been looking for design motifs to use in craft projects, particularly polymer and metal clays. This book has a number of fantastic dragons, but the wizards, for my purpose anyway, were a little too "cute."

To be honest, I purchased this book & CD-ROM mostly for the Wizard images. It contains a decent amount of Wizards and other magical characters. About 66% of the book contains dragon designs. A small portion of the dragon section contains European dragons, however the majority of dragons included in this book are Asian. I would have given it 5 stars if only this collection included more European dragon designs and more detailed image descriptions. I also found a few but really nice medieval Sorceress images that I will definitely implement in my designs. Overall, the added CD-ROM with 6 different image formats makes this a very useful resource. The fact that all images in this collection are permission-free makes this a great buy.

I enjoy quality clipart. In particular, I enjoy fantasy clipart. This book and CD includes almost 200 samples of fantasy-styled clipart (royalty free to use at your leisure!). Many of them remind me of the 1979 Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies - in both the good aspects, and the bad. I did rate this product four stars, and there is a reason for this - some of the included clipart, despite not having a vector-based copy on the disk (the EPS is raster-, not vector-based), is absolutely top notch. It has that old school charm that reminds those of us old enough to remember of the Hobbit animated movie from the 70's and the matching LOTR. They are rounded, low on detail, but high on quality. These clipart samples do not include heavy hatching and shading, but they do include a nice soft and rounded artistic style that screams to be used.

The quality of many of them is excellent, in an admittedly simplistic style. Unlike many of Dover's other clipart books and CDs, these are on the simple side of the detail level, but they are very inventive nonetheless. They provide a nice level of male and female subjects (most in a wizardly style) and some beasties are thrown into the mix. In particular, you will find a nice selection of Asian (?Chinese?) dragons in various styles, shapes and poses. There is a small sample of Aztec "dragonesk" creatures also.

Overall, a very large portion of the art is very nice. However, the product looses a star due to a few poorly drawn samples which are very sub-par when compared to their fellows. Mind you, this is only a very few of the nearly 200 samples. This does not corrupt nor reduce the great quality of the other samples, it just smacks a little of low-grade filler.

I ordered this book and a book called Dragons:A Book of Designs. When I recieved them I flipped through this one and was happy with the selection of images. When I started to look through Dragons:A Book of Designs, I was sorely disappointedDragons: A Book of Designs (Dover Pictorial Archive Series). Everything in the Dragons...Designs book was in the Dover Dragons and Wizards book except the Wizards one had additional media in it. I feel like I paid twice for the same book. This is the Better of the Two Duplicate Books.

I like this book, but it's not up to Mandy's usual top notch style. It's on the simple side.

This book has designs that can easily be used for quilt piecing or fusing. I needed ideas for a baby quilt and wall hanging where another person wanted to pick the design ahead of time (instead of my usual make it up as I go along) and it's worked very well.

There are 31 pages of flower designs. The first one which is large and simple is perfect as is for goldwork embroidery. Several others are also good or can be changed slightly for use. Goldwork uses simple designs which is why this book is so good.

The designs are very good and can be used for lots of different crafts. The black line masters could be enlarged or reduced in size to suit many projects e.g, glass painting, embroidery, applique, machine embroidery, cross stitch, stencil printing and more. They can be a starting point for individualising the design to your own needs by adding the flower designs together to make interesting and creative work.

This is a wonderful collection of over 1,047 individual coats of arms and full armorial achievements, with 393 in color. It is entirely a visual book, so there is no explanation of what one is looking at, but for a beginning heraldic artist looking for pointers or anyone interested in looking at heraldic art, you can't go wrong.

Very easy way to known gourgeous examples of heraldry art of all history and lands.

Like all Dover publications, I was not disappointed when I picked up this book. The illustrations themselves are rich and detailed, truly a feast for the eyes, for any artist or craftsperson. The helpful text and detailed descriptions make the book easy to use and very enjoyable. This book makes a fantastic suplement to the "Design Your Own Coat of Arms" by Rosemary A. Chorzempa (Dover), because it gives you a great wealth of ideas from which to work. I highly reccommend this book to anyone who has an interest in heraldry, you won't be disappointed.

If you want to know what different styles of family emblems people have had this is a great book. If you want to know anything about the individual designs (whos it was, where it is from, age of origin), this is not the book. The book is 70% black and white and 30% color. It would be great for an artist, not a researcher.

This book has lovely pictures, although the author admits she has taken the liberty to decide which should be included for each year. It would be an even better book if the articles were named, better yet a small description, sometimes I wondered if a shoe were a man or woman's.

I think the book is good but stops short of being great but it is interesting and I would like to a sequel with the other drawings that were left out of this edition.

This review is from the viewpoint of a home sewer and crafter who adores vintage clothing, not a fashion historian, designer or illustrator.

Never having purchased any of the Pictorial Archives series before, I was surprised and initially disappointed by the black and white illustrations and the complete lack of text.

While it is fascinating to see how fashion accessories evolved over the decades there is no indication of whether an item was casual and day wear, or dressier for afternoon or evening. An index naming the style of each piece and/or notes explaining popular colors of the day would be helpful.

The black and white illustrations do render the detail of the accessories beautifully. With over 2,000 copyright free illustrations of wide variety of styles for men, women and children included I look forward to years of inspiration for fashion embellishment.

This book is great. It is just what I was looking for in doing some period research. The illustrations could only be better if they were in color. Anyone interested in fashion accessories of this period will not be disappointed.

This book is exactly what it claims to be - a pictorial archive. For descriptions or details, Dover has a wide selection of books that will be of immense help with materials, construction, and history. For those who already have a working knowledge of the century in fashion, this book is a candy store of visual tidbits.

Just a note: very few fashion illustrations of the nineteenth century were colored; hand-coloring was a labor-intensive process reserved for high-end publications with limited runs. Check my Listmania list for some books with color illustrations.

Wonderful source for illumination ideas. Beautiful coloring of the plates, and very clear images. The only problem I had with this book was the very high gloss of the pages. It made it difficult to use for picture reference since you had to hold it at an odd angle to remove the glare from any lights. Otherwise, this book is well worth the money paid. The Dover Series have easily become my favorite source for needlework, illumination, painting, and artwork ideas.

The book is lovely to look at, but who goes around buying books JUST to look at the pictures? The borders are vibrant and catch your eye with their originality and style but what can you really do with them? The sides are extremely uneven leaving no real way to fix and "pixel-push" into a usable piece of artwork. There is no hope for this book when dealing with graphical design. You should save your money for something better.

A wonderful sourcebook of Victorian border designs. The colors are vibrant and scan well, although there is some ghosting from images on the reverse of the page. Many of the designs can be made fully tileable with a little pixel pushing. The copyright allows use of up to 10 images per project. I am extremely pleased with this purchase!

The borders of this book are beautiful, hence three stars - there's no doubt about that. However, it's very hard to find uses for them. Some are actually extremely larger on one side than the other, so, if using the entire thing was ever your plan - you're pretty much out of luck. The difference in side sizes are obviously intentional - but bad. I do not recommend this book to anyone looking to use it for web designs.

Historically many of these designs were manufactured in the Chicago, Ill. area and were sold by catalog. This is a great collection of many of these commercial designs that were offered only by mail order at one time.

This source book of 100 pages of design and motifs from around the world is complemented by 23 pages of descriptions of the elements in each of the "plates" which follow. These elements of design are explained, common and historical names for elements may be given, original colours used, origins of the designs included too. This extra detail gives the book its value, enriching the knowledge of the prospective user, rather than just providing a series of pretty pictures to be copied.

This is a good sourcebook for classic Renaissance style and some Greek style illustrations. Much of the Renaissance art is Greek inspired. Especially noted are the beautiful, and out of the ordinary depictions of Aphrodite. It is intersting to see the Old Pagan influence in these historically accurate depictions.

A wonderful and wide range of designs great for motifs and decorative design development. Don't miss it!

This is a good collection, I just wish the images came in vector format. They are all in photoshop Tiff format.

This is a terrific clip art book however, Dover has sold this exact same book under the title, "Printer's Ornaments and Dingbats." So if you already own that book, safe yourself the money and don't buy this duplicate under a different title. What a bummer!!!

The images are beautiful but purposely skewed. I have to do alot of creative work in photoshop to use them.

I'd suggest to buy this title for people who make handcraft objects in order to take many ideas about decoration.

This book is a great additon to the library of all paper crafters and rubber stampers. It makes creating collages and artwork so much more convenient--just sit back and browse through 361 full color background patterns, and best of all they are all copyright-free! The author offers a delightful variety of colors and styles, inspirations from the 15th through the 20th century. It looks like some were taken from fabric, and even have a textural quality. With simply the use of a color copier or better yet a scanner, you will have no limit to your imagination and creativity.