During these economic times, it’s more important than ever to find frugal ways to feed, clothe, and even entertain your family. Fortunately, the Internet is full of creative ideas, freebies, and samples that can help. One of my favorite such treasure troves is the weekly Dover Sampler, which you can get sent to your inbox every week – all you have to do is supply your e-mail address.
So just who is Dover Publications, and what is this sampler all about? Well, Dover Publications is a nifty publishing company that has been around since 1941. They specialize in republishing low-priced editions of works in the public domain (why pay $7.95 for your high school student’s required copy of Ethan Frome when you can get it for $1.50 in a Dover Thrift edition?), and in publishing fun and creative coloring and activity books, often using vintage clip art or reproductions of famous works. They also sell CD-ROMs of royalty-free clip art, which means you can use it for run or profit without having to worry about copyright violations.
So what about this Dover Sampler? It’s simple: in exchange for your e-mail address, every Friday Dover will e-mail you a link to a web page offering you dozens of free samples from their hundreds of titles. Just to give you an idea, the most recent sampler link gave me one or more pages from each of the following Dover publications:
Clip Art
- Victorian Designs
- Persian Designs and Motifs
- Jazz Age Art Deco
- Spot Illustrations and Motifs
Coloring Books
- Color Your Own Bakst Ballet Designs
- Wedding Traditions from Around the World
- Art Nouveau Patterns
- Leonardo da Vinci Stained Glass
Children’s Favorites
- Cats and Kittens Stained Glass Coloring Book
- Cut & Color Paper Dolls: Maria and Megan
- Favorite Poems of Childhood
- Hidden Pictures Coloring and Puzzle Fun
and Miscellaneous Books
- The Romance of Tristan and Iseult
- Contemporary Stained Glass Sidelights
- Our Vanishing Landscape
- Radford’s House Designs of the Twenties
In previous samplers, I’ve gotten origami instructions, classic Arthur 
Rackham fairy tale illustrations, Color Your Own Tiffany Windows, How to Draw Horses, Fashion Drawing, Logic Puzzles, and more. Many of the samples are in black and white for coloring, while others are in full color, such as a page of vintage Christmas designs that would be gorgeous on do-it-yourself cards.
Now what can you do with all this? Well, each week, you can explore the sample pages and save the ones you like simply by right-clicking, choosing “save image as”, and naming the file. The pages will save as jpgs that you can then cut and paste into Word or Publisher, resizing them to your liking. The clip art designs are wonderful for adult crafters to use when making greeting cards or other ink stamp type art, and the children’s samples are obviously great for kids. These pages can be a weekly treat for your child, or you can save up a variety of pages over several weeks and months and produce an impressive activity/coloring book. You can even print the pages on the back of scrap paper and put them in an old three-ring binder, for the ultimate in frugal, eco-friendly fun.
Naturally, Dover provides these samplers in the hope that you will peruse their title list and eventually order something — and you actually should take a look at their offerings because they have so many wonderful and inexpensive products! However, I’m happy to report that Dover is completely non-intrusive — they don’t send obnoxious amounts of e-mails, and their privacy policy states that they do not sell customer information. I’ve been very happy with their sampler, and I think more people should know about it. One note: I would recommend not saving up the e-mails for too long, because eventually the link may become inactive. They do seem to last at least several weeks, but I was unable to open some that were a few months old. In any case, I’ve gotten to the point where now I open the e-mail as soon as I get it, because I can’t wait to see what they’ve sent me this time!
This guest post was provided by Amy from Amy’s Stocking Stuffers. Amy has an awesome website with awesome finds. Check out her site you might find that perfect Stocking Stuffer that you have been looking for.
