14 Free Cupids for Pixel or Print

While visiting the office.microsoft.com templates page the other day, noticing their current selection of free Valentine templates, I re-discovered this funny little Valentine that I created while contracting there, and wanted to say a few words about this versatile Valenttine's Day Countdown Calendar which was created as something to be enjoyed in either printed format or in PowerPoint.

The opening screen (or front of the card) of this Valentine features 14 numbered doors with cupids delivering love letters through the mail. What the doors reveal is totally up to you. While the download file has already been preset with images and text - you can easily change these. (The first image below shows the doors - and the second image shows a couple of doors still closed but others revealing images and text).

I haven't had a chance to explore this myself, but I think it would be fabulous to do a version on actual paper. Basically, you would print screen the scene with closed doors, and then print screen the scene with all items revealed. On just the front image, cut in such a way that the doors would swing open. And again, you can customize the back image to contain your own text, images, photographs, etc. Glue the two pieces together around the frame of the doors - and you've got a cool interactive Valentine! (The image below is a mock-up of how this might appear, doors ajar):

If you want to do use this digitally on PowerPoint, this help article (How to create a personalized Advent calendar), while it actually discusses a similar type of PowerPoint template, (an Animated Advent Calendar I had created for Christmas), the basics hold true for updating this Valentine.

Happy Valentine's Day 2012...!!!

Christmas Activity / Coloring Book

Christmas time is coming around again, reminding me of some free things you can enjoy created when I worked at office.microsoft.com -- creating free holiday content from their extensive clip-art library to create free downloadable content as part of the permanent collection of the template library. (I guess the keyword there is FREE).

One day I was given a task to fill in some content gaps per public requests for coloring sheets. The goal was to come up with at least five coloring pages of animals. Well, I couldn't help but run with this project, (and betweent managing the website),  created 5 coloring books (each with around 8 pages), taking advantage of one particularly great style of art: #1450. The result was three with animals: (forest, farm, aquatic) and then, of course, Christmas and Halloween.

The Christmas book was also a bit more than just a coloring book, but was inspired by the activity books I used to receive as a kid during the Christmas vacation school break... and so in addition to pages just for coloring, there are also connect-the-dots, word jumbles, word finds, and pages for writing in your on text. 

Below are thumbnail versions for your perusal - and be sure to visit the office.microsoft website for the full size Christmas Activity / Coloring Book download:


And if you like these (especially Santa there in the last image) don't forget there is full stationery set with letterhead, gift certificates, envelopes, gift tags, and more blogged about here: Summer Santa Stationery Set.

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As a side note - part of the beauty of templates and of Word 2007 is the ability to customize to suit your own tastes. If you didn't catch my original blog entry (on the Microsoft Office blog) that explained the above procedure (creating Word art from the Clip Art library) -- I have recreated the content in this blog entry here.

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