Download the free printables collection (or single page) from Mom's Break. For this tutorial, Mom's Break Cloud Letters will be featured. Go to Mom's Break Scrapbook to get these letters (or use any other of Mom's Break free printables).

If you need help with downloading a "collection" of printables, which download as a zipped folder, then go to:

How to Download a "Printables Collection"

Open the printable in Paint. This is easy to do. You can either open Microsoft Paint and then open the printable, or you can position the mouse on the file name of the printable, right click, and then select Open With, and choose Paint.

If you are having trouble with opening the printable in Paint, then go to: How To Insert Text in a Free Printable Card or Invitation

That tutorial will show you the step-by-step screen shots how to open a printable in Paint.

The printable opens in Paint, as shown to the left.

If you want to print the whole page at one time, you must first change the "Page Setup" so that all of the letters on this page will print on one piece of paper.

Click on the word File in the toolbar, then click on Page Setup.

A new window opens up. In the lower right portion of the window in the box labeled "Scaling," click in the circle that says "Fit to" and change both numbers to the number 1. Just click the mouse to the right of the number, hit backspace, and then type in a number 1, in both boxes.

Then click OK.

You can now print the whole page of letters. On the toolbar, click on File, then click on Print.

If you want to print more than one page of the same letters, then change the "Number of copies" to the number desired. Click on Print.

You can print on regular printer paper. However, if you are crafting or scrapbooking, you might want to print on heavier "card stock" paper. This is a heavy-weight paper that should work OK in your printer. It comes in lots of colors, so you can be as creative as you want!

You can also print one letter at a time, or print just specific letters. This process is called "cropping" (or "cutting" out a piece from a larger image).

This isn't that hard to do, and with a little bit of practice, you can do it!

Go to Step 8 to learn how to print a single letter.

Go to Step 7 if you want to print more than one letter on a single page.

You can also print more than one  letter on one page (or several of the same letter). This is a little trickier, but practice a few times, and you'll be a pro!

Go to Step 14 to learn how to print more than one letter or several of the same letters on one page.

Choose the "Select" icon from the left-hand side toolbar. The Select icon looks like a box made of dotted lines. To see this better, be sure to click on the picture at left, and then click on it again when it opens in a new window.

Click on the Select icon.

Then, slide the cursor back over to the letters. You will notice that the cursor turns into something that looks like a plus sign (+). See Step 9.

Now, click the mouse somewhere on the page that is to the top left of the desired letter. In the example to the left, the letter A has been chosen.

Hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse down to the bottom right of the letter. As you drag the mouse, a dotted-line box will appear around the letter.

You will need to practice this. If the dotted-line box isn't exactly around the whole letter, then mouse the cursor off of the page (to the right of the letter page, where you see the dark gray area in the picture), and click. This will delete the dotted-line box.

Now, just try again. It may take a little practice, but you'll get it!

Copy the letter. You do this by clicking on Edit on the toolbar, and then clicking on Copy.

There is another way to copy the letter. See Step 11.

You can right-click anywhere inside the dotted-line box, and then click on the word Copy.

Either Step 10 or Step 11 will work fine. Do it whichever way you feel most comfortable with.

Paste the letter into a new Paint screen.

Click on File, and then click on New. This will give you a blank page.

Now, click on Edit, and then click on Paste.

Now the single letter is pasted in on the new page.

You can now print just this letter. Go to File, then click on Print. Only this letter will print.

Now, see? That was pretty easy, wasn't it? It takes a little practice to get the box around just the part that you want to print, but do it a couple of times. It gets easier every time you do it!

Now, you are going to learn to copy and paste different letters onto a single page to print just the letters you want!

First, you must open a new Microsoft Word document (as shown to the left).

Now, go back to Steps 8-11 to copy a single letter from the page of letters that is open in Paint.

Once you have a letter that has been copied, go to the Word document, and click on Edit (on the toolbar) and click on Paste.

Now, one letter has been pasted in. Go back to Paint, and copy the next letter you want. Go back to the Word document, and paste in the next letter using the instructions in Step 15.

You're doing great!

Now, simply repeat these last couple of steps to paste in the letters that you want to print.

If you need more than one of the same letter, you can do that, too. See Step 22.

As you paste letters into Word, you might notice that the new letter you are pasting in drops down to the next "line" of the Word document. This is because there isn't enough room to put another letter on the same line. This is OK.

If you are going to be cutting out each individual letter after you print this page, then this isn't a problem.

If you are creating a "letterhead" and you want all the letters to be on the same line, then you can do that! See Step 19.

Click on the first letter (here, it is the letter "J"). A "box" will appear around it. At each corner, and in the middle on each side, you will see a little black box.

Move the cursor onto the little black box in the lower right corner. You will note that the cursor turns into a two-sided arrow.

Hold down the mouse, and drag the box to the left. The letter will get smaller, and once it is small enough, the other letter(s) will move up to that line (notice that the letter J looks smaller and the letter N is now on the same line).

Repeat Steps 19 and 20 until the letters are the size that you want them. If you make them too small, you can make them big again, using the same procedure, just dragging the corner of the box in the other direction.

Play with this procedure. It is easy and once you know how to "re-size" images like this, you can get very creative!

When the letters are the size you want them to be, you can print the page.

Be sure to save the page if you are going to be using this as a "letterhead" for your very own stationery!

If you need to print a lot of the same letter, then simply copy and paste that same letter in as many times as you need it.

You only need to COPY one time. Then keep clicking on PASTE as many times as you want. Each time you click on PASTE, another one of the same letter will appear.

Use the same process for cropping and printing numbers! It's just that simple, now that you know how!

This is the end of the Crop and Print tutorial.

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Jan's Tutorials, also available on Jan's Tips, are easy-to-read-and-understand tutorials for using MS Word and MS Paint, as well as using other computer-based features and programs to create cards, gift tags, and labels. 

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Jan K., The Proofer owns the copyright on all tutorials and crafts. © Copyright 2005 to present.