If you are creating a Steampunk or vintage-style scrapbook album or a scrapbook page featuring your father or other man in your life, watch face images for scrapbooking are an ideal embellishment for your theme.
Finding Watch Images
There are three main resources for images with watches:
- Buy and download digital images.
- Find and download free commercial use or public domain images.
- Create your own images.
Downloadable Watch Face Images for Scrapbooking
Whether you are a traditional paper scrapbook aficionado or a die-hard digital scrapbooker, look for printable watch face images for scrapbooking that you can download as digital files. Because watch faces and gears are round, there will by necessity be areas surrounding the watch face that are either transparent or solid. Be sure that any digital image you download for this purpose is in .PNG file format with a transparent background unless you have the time and skills to digitally extract the image. You will also want an image that has a resolution of at least 200 dpi (dots per inch), both for clear, crisp printing and for digital scrapbooking.
Watch Face Images to Buy and Download
The following sites have some great downloadable watch-themed images:
- Fine Craft Guild sells scrapbooking papers that feature vintage pocket watches.
- Studio Girls offers a Steampunk-style digital scrapbook kit that includes various watch faces and several watch gears.
Free Watch Face Images to Download
When downloading free images, be careful of copyright infringement. If a photographer provides an image of a watch design that is copyrighted, then you may not use the photo for commercial purposes. However, basic, strictly utilitarian watches and clocks are not protected under copyright laws, nor are designs created before 1923.
These sites are worth a look:
- MorgueFile, a photo sharing site with liberal copyright licensing, has a few watch and clock face images and even a Steampunk-worthy watch back image with gears.
- Public Domain Image has a nice silver pocket watch back image.
Create Your Own Image
Want to get creative? Try these ideas for making your own watch images:
- Watch faces are solid round shapes, usually outlined with a black or brass stroke, with numbers placed around the dial in evenly-spaced increments. Add a long black stroke from the center of the dial to point to a number and another shorter stroke, and you've got a watch face image.
- Take a photo of your favorite vintage or antique watch, or take a broken watch apart and photograph the images against a plain contrasting background. Cut carefully around the image to use in traditional scrapbooking or extract the image in Adobe Photoshop or other image editing software.
- You can also draw and scan your own watch face image for a unique graphic to grace your scrapbook pages.
No matter which of these resources you choose, you are sure to find a watch face (or several) that suit your scrapbooking project perfectly.
