A Comprehensive Guide to Finding and Using Summer Borders Clip Art for Free

Summer is a time filled with fun warmth and relaxation. The longer days and sunny weather inspire many of us to break out the arts and crafts as we look to decorate for the season. An easy way to add a pop of summer flair is by using borders around projects, documents, invitations, banners, and more. Clip art borders with summer themes like sunshine, palm trees, seashells, and tropical flowers are widely available for free online if you know where to look. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know to find and use summer borders clip art for free.

Clip art borders, also sometimes known as frame graphics or design elements, are pre-made graphic image files that can be downloaded and inserted into documents, projects, and designs. Borders come in set sizes and can be scaled up or down as needed. Formats like PNG and JPG allow borders to be used in image editors and publishing software, while vector formats like SVG and EPS can be resized without any loss of quality.

Clip art borders provide an easy way to decorate and theme projects. Common categories of clip art borders include holidays, seasons, events, patterns, shapes, and themes. For summer, typical border designs include representations of sunny weather, palm trees, tropical plans and flowers, seashells, sand, ocean waves, and outdoor summertime fun.

Using clip art borders is a great way for non-designers to add style to invitations, signs, flyers, websites, presentations, scrapbooks, cards, and any other visual projects. Teachers also frequently use printable borders to decorate classrooms, handouts, bulletin boards, and more for different seasons and holidays throughout the school year.

Benefits of Using Free Clip Art Borders

Clip art borders offer many advantages, especially when obtained for free:

• Saves time: hunting down, designing, and formatting borders from scratch can be time consuming. Pre-made clip art borders add instant style with no effort.

• Adds creativity even simple projects can be enhanced visually by adding a colorful thematic border. Unique borders provide creative flair.

• Variety there are thousands of unique border styles and designs available, allowing you to always find the perfect options.

• ** Improves aesthetics:** borders, frames, and dividers improve overall aesthetics and tie projects together.

• Easy to use: borders are ready to simply download and insert into projects as desired.

• Free: avoiding design costs, clip art border sites offer downloads at no charge.

• Good quality: many free borders are high resolution photographs and vector images.

For hobbyists, teachers, crafters, small business owners, and non-designers, clip art borders provide a quick and easy option to take projects to the next level.

Where to Find Free Summer Borders Clip Art

Many websites offer free download borders, frames, dividers, and graphics with summer themes. Here are some top sites to visit:

Freepik

With over 49,000 free vector borders, Freepik is a fantastic resource for summer-themed borders. Borders featuring tropical motifs, summer fruits, seashells, ocean imagery, and sunny shapes can be downloaded for free in PNG, SVG, EPS and other formats.

Pixabay

Pixabay has an entire category dedicated just to borders and frames, with summer designs among seasonal options. Images are free with no attribution required.

PNGTree

PNGTree provides hundreds of tropical, summer, and ocean borders and frames as PNG images available to download at no cost.

NicePNG

NicePNG has an assorted collection of free summer borders featuring wreaths, ocean elements, summer fruits, and more against transparent backgrounds.

Vecteezy

With easy filtering options, it’s simple to narrow down Vecteezy’s massive database of vectors to find free summer-themed borders.

Canva

Canva’s simple design interface has a templates section with free frame graphics and borders that can be customized, including summer and tropical themes.

MS Word

Microsoft Word has a built-in selection of free borders and clip art that changes seasonally, with summer options during June-August.

Types of Summer Borders to Look For

Clip art summer borders come in diverse styles. Here are some of the most common summer border themes and examples to key an eye out for:

Floral Borders

Flowers represent growth, blooming color, and the lushness of summer. Look for borders with arrangements of brightly colored flowers like daisies, roses, sunflowers, tulips, and more.

<img src=”https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2013/07/13/13/36/border-160032__340.png” width=”250″>

Tropical Borders

Tropical borders feature exotic summer botanicals like palm trees, hibiscus, bird of paradise, and monstera leaves.

<img src=”https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2016/08/02/13/24/frame-1563691__340.png” width=”250″>

Nautical/Ocean Borders

Evocative of beach vacations and lazy summer days, borders with ocean-themed elements like seashells, starfish, sand, and waves are summery go-to’s.

<img src=”https://cdn5.vectorstock.com/i/1000×1000/66/43/seamless-summer-ocean-border-vector-12256663.jpg” width=”250″>

Fruit Borders

Juicy summer fruits like pineapples, watermelon, oranges, and berries make fun border centerpieces.

<img src=”https://i.pinimg.com/originals/10/b2/6e/10b26e74ebaa77a4d904fcc48c9a1318.jpg” width=”250″>

Sun and Sky Borders

Sunshine, clouds, sun rays, and blue skies represent the longer daylight hours of summer.

<img src=”https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f3/b9/45/f3b945c78b33510d6bf33aecb8a29f14.png” width=”250″>

Summer Fun Borders

Icons like beach balls, boats, sand castles, bikes, and grills depict summertime recreation.

<img src=”https://cdn2.vecteezy.com/i/000/124/641/original/free-summer-objects-border.png” width=”250″>

How to Use Clip Art Borders

Using pre-designed clip art borders to enhance your projects and documents takes just a few easy steps:

1. Download: Visit sites like Freepik, Pixabay, Vecteezy, or Canva to browse summer border options and download for free. PNG and JPG work for basic images, while SVG and EPS vector files allow quality resizing.

2. Open File: Open the border file in an image editor, word processor, publishing software, or other application you plan to use it in.

3. Resize If Needed: If desired, scale the border image up or down to desired size. With PNG/JPG this reduces quality, but vector files can resize losslessly.

4. Insert into Project: Copy and paste or place the border image into your document or design where you want it positioned.

5. Adjust If Necessary: Tweak the border size, layering, color, or other elements so it integrates into your project smoothly.

And that’s it! With the border added, your summer party invites, classroom workbook, website headers, or other projects are ready for that eye-catching extra flair. Change border styles and themes any time to freshen up your project’s look.

Design Tips for Using Borders

While border clip art does the design work for you, there are still a few tips that can elevate your efforts:

• Pick a bold color: vibrant borders stand out best against white or lighter backgrounds. Avoid busy backgrounds.

• Keep it simple: let the border be the accent, not the focus. Avoid clutter.

• Focus on theme: match the occasion or season. Tropical borders for summer, wreaths for Christmas, etc.

• Scale appropriately: resize the border so it fits the space without awkward empty areas or unwanted cropping.

• Add padding: give the border a little breathing room in the design space. Don’t crowd other elements too closely.

• Pair with other graphics: combine the border with thematic summer shapes, illustrations or textures for a complete look.

• Credit the creator: if using borders from Creative Commons sources, be sure to provide photo credit as required.

Following basic graphic design principles will help ensure your projects look polished and professional, instead of the amateurish look that can result from careless border use.

Get Creative with Summer Themed Projects

Summer borders aren’t limited to just decorating documents or enhancing website headers. Consider fun and crafty ways to incorporate free clip art borders into all types of summer projects:

• Frame out custom printable birthday, wedding, or party invitations

• Use borders to create unique photo frames for vacation pics or summer album covers

• Decorate the edges of custom fabric blankets, canvas totes, or other homemade gifts

• Frame a chalkboard summer drink menu or schedule board for the patio, BBQ, or pool

• Add to homemade welcome, thank you, or celebration cards and signs

• Accent summer garlands, wreaths, table decor, and other handcrafted decorations

• Adorn personalized summer scrapbook pages, memory books, or photo displays

• Decorate classroom handouts, worksheets, bulletin boards, journals and more

• Accent blog posts, presentations, flyers, brochures, newsletters and other documents

Don’t limit summer border use just to 2D projects – get creative with decorating any summer crafts and objects!

Summer borders add lively seasonal flair to all types of documents, projects, crafts, and designs. While borders can be purchased, there are thousands of high quality, summer-themed options available to download for free if you know where to look. Sites like Freepik, Vecteezy, and Pixabay make finding incredible free borders easy. Just choose a style, download the border image file, insert into your project, resize if needed, and adjust to refine the look. With themed options like floral designs, ocean waves, fruit, sunshine, and summer fun, it’s simple to give your projects seasonal summer style.