Add, Combine, and Save Shapes and Clip Art in a Pages Document

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In this video, we’re going to look at how we can add clipart, or shapes to our Pages document on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. Not only can we add clipart, or shapes that are built into Pages, but we can also format it, we can change the color, we can add an outline. And then we can also make our own shapes, we can combine these different shapes and save that as a new shape. Let’s see how this is done. We’re going to look at this on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. But we’re first going to look at it on the Mac.

So I have here a blank Pages document, I want to add a shape, let’s say I wanted to add a shape of an animal, all I need to do is just go up to shape here in the menu bar. And when I click on it, you’re gonna see I have a number of different shapes. Here I have them all categorized. So I’m going to go over to animals. And here we can see we have a number of different animals, I can even search. Let’s say I wanted to search for a giraffe. This is my wife’s favorite animal. So now all I need to do is just click on this. And we can see it added it to my document, I can make a larger and smaller, I can even style it, I want to make it a different color, I just go over to my colors here.

And I can change the color, I want to add a line to it, or a border, I just click on the border here. And I can add a border to it. Let’s go and add another shape. This time we’re going to go and add a rabbit. Click on the rabbit here. And now we can see we have my rabbit, I just place it down at its feet here. And we have my rabbit. Again, I can style it, I can add a border to it. Now in addition to these different clipart shapes, and we have a number of different clipart shapes, I can also create my own, I can combine these, I’m going to delete these. Now it’s going to create my own crescent moon.

To do that, I just go to shape here. And we’re going to go with basic circle. So I have my basic circle here. Let’s make this a little bit larger. Now what I do is I go on add another one. Let’s change the color of it. So I can see the difference here, we’re going to make it a little bit larger. And what I want to do is make this a crescent moon. So basically what I want to do is I just want to have this black part here. So I need to erase the blue part here. So I’m going to combine these two shapes. How do we do that? Well, basically, all I have to do is just select them, we can see that I have them selected here. And then what we do is we go over to arrange, under arrange, we have a number of different tools down towards the bottom, I can unite them, intersect them, subtract them, or let’s move that out of the way there exclude them.

So let’s take a look at these four different options. When I unite them, it’s going to make one shape. Let’s go ahead and unite them. And now we can see we have one shape, it’s just a little bit oblong there. I’m going to undo when I intersect them, what it’s going to do is it’s going to create a new shape based on where they are intersected. Click on it. And now we can see we have a little skinnier circle there. I’m going to undo I can subtract them. This is where I have my crescent moon. So it’s subtracting one shape from another. And then I can also exclude them. And now it’s excluding where they intersect.

Again, what I want to do is make a crescent moon out of it. So I just go to subtract. And now we have my crescent moon, I can move this around, I can reshape it, I want to save this as my own shape so that I can use it later on. What I do is I click on it and then I Ctrl click and hold down the Ctrl key and click so I have my contextual menu. And then you’re going to see saved my shapes selected. And then we have a new category here called my shapes. I go and name it. And now if I ever want to add this to another document, I can go and find it under my shapes. And then the last thing I want to mention, I can also add Bezier curves to it. So I want to modify this shape. All I do is just select it, I hold down the Control key and click and then we go and make it editable. And we can go and add Bezier curves to it and then what I’m able to do is save this as a new shape. So I just click on it CTRL and I can save this to my new shapes.

We can do the same thing on the iPad and iPhone. Let’s go over to my iPad. Add, I have a blank document here, I go up to the plus here, we can see we have all of my different categories here. So I can select any one of these categories or shapes from these categories, and I can style it. And then I can also create my own shapes, we’re going to go to basic here, we’ll go over the square. Let’s make a blue. Now let’s go with a circle. Let’s make this a little bit smaller here. So it just fits in there. And now, what I’d like to do is combine these, how do we do that, I select them both. They’re both selected.

And then I go need to go to my arrange tool. So I go up to Format, we go over to arrange. And then down at the bottom, we have my combine shapes. From here, I can intersect them, I can overlap them, I can combine them. Let’s go ahead and subtract them. And you can see that we subtracted that circle from my square. And then if I want to save this as a new shape, I Ctrl click and I can add it to my shapes. On the iPhone, it basically works the same way, it’s a little bit more tricky just because you’re using a smaller display.

But I’m in Pages here a tap on the plus, I go to shapes, I have all of my different clipart here, I can add them, I can style them, format them, add a border, change the color. And then if I want to combine them, I go to my different shapes I want to combine, we’re going to go with rounded corner. Let’s go and make this one blue. And let’s add a circle. Go outside there. Now I need to combine them or select both of them. This is where it gets a little bit tricky. To select both of them, what I need to do is tap on one, I’m going to move it outside here a little bit. And then as I tap and hold on that one, what I’m able to do is tap on the other one. And now they are both selected. Now what I can do is I can go to the Format tool. And I can go to arrange. And then if I swipe up, I have my combine shapes, I’m going to combine them. And now I have my new shape. I want to add that to my library to my clipper, all I have to do is just tap and hold oops went out of the way there, I tap and hold on it

we get our little menu. And then from here, what I’m able to do is add it to my shapes. And as you can see, they do sync across all the different devices. So you can add a shape on one device and you’ll be able to use it on all of your other devices. So that’s how we add clipart or shapes to our Pages document as well as how we can create our own shapes. And once we create our own shapes, we’re also able to save that and access that shape from all of our different devices. We do this through Pages on the Mac, iPad and iPhone