Clipart Studio

What it is

Clipart Studio is a collage table in a browser: a green cutting mat, a white letter-size page, and a rack of magazine covers in the sidebar. You open a magazine, cut a piece out with scissors you control point by point, and the scrap lands on the mat. The site says the magazines come from the Internet Archive's magazine rack and the images from a public domain media library.

How to play

Click a cover in the sidebar. The magazine opens large, and a how-to card explains the scissors: click to drop points for straight edges, click and drag to trace a freehand curve, close on the first point or press Enter to snip, Ctrl or Cmd Z to undo a point. The cut piece leaves a white hole in the magazine and lands on the mat. Drag it onto the page and a small toolbar offers trim, front, back and delete. The Images tab has Art and Photos sub-tabs and a search box, an upload button is there for your own files, a PDF or an image the page says, and the bottom bar holds undo, redo, pages, download and submit.

What makes it different

The scissors. The site makes you cut, and the how-to card offers a freehand trace, so every ragged edge is your own. Scraps live on the mat, where a note says they stay off the print, so the table can stay messy. The rack shows scanned magazines from the mid 2000s to the mid 2010s, filtered by a topic menu, and you can page through the issue before you cut.

Why it is on Bored

Clipart Studio is the slower kind of toy, a thing you make rather than a screen that reacts. Twenty minutes with the scissors produces a page, a download button waits in the bottom bar, and the gallery shows what other people did with the same rack. It is a kitchen table covered in magazines, minus the glue.

Tips

• Start with straight-edge clicks, trace freehand later
• Use the next-page arrow, the cover is rarely the best page in the magazine
• Keep scraps on the mat until you know where they go
• Shuffle the rack if none of the six covers appeals

FAQ