Free Download A Day

One of the sure signs that Spring has Sprung is almost upon us: Mother's Day. Whether you're celebrating with your Mom, your Dad who was almost like a Mom, your grandmother, daughter, in-laws, or somebody else, be sure to take a moment and say "thanks" to all the Moms in your life. And, hey—if you want to make your celebration one of the best ever, maybe you should grab some free printables to include in the big day.

Grab a printable greeting card or two to wish Mom the very best. Is breakfast in bed in the cards this year—or maybe a big celebratory dinner? Grab some free Mom recipe cards to keep track of your favorites. You did remember to buy Mom a gift, didn't you? Make it extra special with a printable gift tag. After all, she needs to know who thought so highly of her, right? And speaking of gifts, children will enjoy coloring a special picture for Mom, with the help of the hundreds of free printable coloring pages to choose from. And finally, you can proudly hand her a World's Best Mom certificate to let her know just how important she is to you.

All of us here at FreeDownloadADay.com hope that your Mom has the best Mother's Day ever!

Did you ever need to tell somebody how to do something on their computer? Some simple instructions are easy to talk through, but when things get more complicated, there's nothing that can substitute for showing them how to do it. That's all well and good if they're sitting at the next desk, but that's not so easy if they're halfway around the world. For that, you need a video capture tool that can record what you do on your screen, that they can look at later.

ScreenToaster is a free tool that helps you to do just that. It doesn't require a huge download, although it does need to stick a Java applet on your system, and it should run on any computer that supports Java, which means that most Windows, Mac, and Linux systems are good to go.

All you do is click the button, and start doing whatever it is that you want to record. Create a tutorial, where you demonstrate how to create a tutorial—you get the idea. When you're all done, you can send your handiwork via email, or embed it in a web page or blog.

And don't worry: ScreenToaster doesn't leave screen crumbs.

Download ScreenToaster

Back in the day, if you wanted to create a collage—a picture made up of other pictures, photographs, doodles, bits and pieces of "stuff", all glued together—you had to get out the scissors and paste. As with most complicated processes, there's now an electronic way to automate this process.

Shape Collage is a tool that lets you build a collage on your computer. You can use your own pictures from your local drive, or you can incorporate images from the Web. Choose a shape, add your images, tweak the spacing, and you're on your way to artistic greatness. Save your masterpiece as a JPEG or PNG, or even as a Photoshop PSD file. Each image in your collage is in a separate layer, so you can use Photoshop or GIMP to go in and manually adjust the particulars.

Shape Collage is free for personal use. It's available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and just about anybody else who supports Java. And you don't get glue all over your fingers.

Download Shape Collage

It's almost time to break out the springtime bonnets and hard-boiled eggs: Easter is right around the corner. While Easter doesn't seem to get the same attention that Christmas does, it's still a big deal. One way to help add some fun to your celebration of this special day is with free printable Easter goodies. To start with, you can grab a free letter from the Easter Bunny, with many for kids, and a special naughty one for the grown-ups. Send your own Easter greetings with a funny Easter card. Make your Easter baskets extra special with free Easter gift tags. Your holiday meal will be even tastier when your table's set with Easter place cards and your favorite old family recipes are written out on Easter recipe cards. You can even add a whimsical touch of Easter to your business correspondence with an Easter-themed fax cover sheet. You can grab all the free Easter coloring pages that your little ones can handle from here and here and here.

Have a Happy Easter!

Have you ever downloaded a deck of cards? Neither have we, but that's all about to change. With SVG-cards, you can do just that. Well, almost at least.

SVG-cards is a huge image that, when you print it out and chop it up, will give you a deck of cards. As the name suggests, this image is in SVG—scalable vector graphics—format. Unlike bitmapped image files, SVG are vector graphics. This means that you can resize them without making them all nasty looking, with jagged pixelation and all. It includes the faces of all the cards of a standard deck of 52 playing cards, as well as a couple of Jokers, and a design for the back as well.

You can choose to print them out as they come onto paper or card stock, or you might scale them down, or up, to make them into a size that works better for you. If you like the designs, you can also do more exotic things like put them on T-shirts as well.

SVG-cards are free to download.

Download SVG-cards

Holidays are a wonderful time: friends, family, celebration, and traditions. Often we associate these primarily with Christmas. But what about the other big days in the year? There's a certain Jolly Fat Man in a red suit who gets all the publicity, but what about that Large Springtime Rodent*, The Easter Bunny? Easter's a big deal too, and it deserves its fair share of attention.

Free Easter Printables can help you get off to a good start with your Easter celebration. They've got an "in" with the Easter Bunny, you know. You can even download a letter from The Easter Bunny from their site. There's a whole collection of letters, ranging from your garden variety letter, to special ones for Easter morning, letters addressed specifically to a boy or girl, and even one specially written for the grown-ups.

Along with those holiday letters, Free Easter Printables has a whole collection of Easter Coloring Pages. You can grab more pictures of Easter Eggs here than you can shake an Easter Basket at–a great way to keep the little ones entertained until the big day.

FreeEasterPrintables.com is a free service.

* Yes, we know that rabbits are members of the order Lagomorpha and not Rodentia, but work with us here, OK?

Download Free Easter Printables

The Pencil Project is an interesting tool that lets users easily create diagrams. It's available as a standalone application for Windows and *NIX systems, or as an add-on for version 3 of the Firefox web browser.

With a set of built-in stencils, it's easy to get started on your project. Whether you're diagramming a work flow, or prototyping your next web page or desktop application, you can add your own objects to the items supplied with the tool. You've got access to images of all the native controls from your system, so you can build application prototypes that really look like how the finished product will appear. Manipulate all the onscreen components with align, rotate, resize functionality, and more. Add in a background image, and manipulate text onscreen. And when you're done, you can export your whole project to PNGs, so you can pack them up and take them with you.

You may want to take The Pencil Project out for a spin the next time you're building the next killer app.

Download The Pencil Project

It's nearly St. Paddy's Day, the day when everybody's Irish. While some folks' first inclination is to head for all things green—green beer, green hair, green eggs and ham—we'd like to propose a slightly lower-key way to celebrate the day: Free St. Patrick's Day printables!

Send your holiday greetings with a free printable card, or fax them with a holiday-themed fax cover sheet. Decorate for your holiday get-together with a free holiday banner. And keep yourself and the kids busy with all the free St. Patrick's Day-themed coloring pages you can download—more leprechauns and shamrocks than you can shake a shillelagh at!

Have a Happy St. Patrick's Day. Erin Go Braugh!

We all have dreams. Some people want fame. Others want fortune. How about a font in your own handwriting?

YourFonts is a way to personalize your documents by using your own handwriting as your font. Visit their site and download their character template—a PDF file. Fill in the blanks in your own handwriting, and upload it back to them. Within minutes you can download your own custom font—a font only you have, because it's your own handwriting. Fonts are OpenType, and fully compatible with your Mac, PC, or Linux system. The site gives clear instructions and plenty of examples to help you to successfully create your custom font.

YourFonts is a free service. You'll need an app like Adobe Acrobat Reader to print the font template form, and a scanner to digitize the template to upload samples of your handwriting. The fonts generated should be compatible with just about any system.

Download YourFonts

Whether you're planning a fancy dinner party or just a casual get-together, it always adds a touch of elegance when you put out placecards on your table. Whether you're trying to enforce a more formal "boy-girl-boy-girl" seating scheme, or just trying to keep the conversation civil by keeping your conservative uncle away from your liberal cousin, placecards help you to direct traffic around the dining room.

Printable Placecards has dozens of different placecard designs to choose from. There are basic placecards for informal occasions, or fancy placecards for weddings and baby showers. Birthday placecards add to the festive feel of the occasion. There's even a Mardi Gras placecard—laissez les bon temps rouler!

Printable Placecards are available as a free download. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader, or another app that can print PDF files. Print them out, trim them—there are four placecards on each sheet—write your guests' names on them and it's time for dinner (or tea or whatever your occasion may be). There are also customizable versions of placecards available for just $5.

Download Printable Placecards