1. Design Your Own Shield Online on the Internet

	The Alnwick Castle website offers an online ability to design your own shield. Learn all about colours, styles and emblems. Choose your layout, colour in segments and decide how your shield should look. Click here to access this useful feature.
	The Victoria and Albert Museum website offers an online ability to design your own shield for both male and female arms. Learn all about colours, styles and emblems. Choose your layout, colour in segments and decide how your shield should look. Click here to access this useful feature.

2. Design Your Own Shield on your computer

• a) A Microsoft Windows 95 program is available to download and install on your personal computer entitled "Blazon for Windows 95" authored by Pete Barrett. You can download this file (zipped) by clicking here! (360KB).
   
• b) Another Microsoft Windows program is available to download and install on your personal computer entitled "Blazons! 2000" authored by . You can download this file (zipped) by clicking here! (5.5MB).

3. Design Your Own Shield on Paper

• Large sized devices (clipart) will fit the blank shield. Choose medium and small devices if using a shield divided into sections (The basic geometrical figures are called Ordinaries. Click here to see more designs using Ordinaries and Lines of Partition). You may also decide to draw your own unique devices on your shield.
• To follow heraldic convention, don't place two coloured objects on top of each other in your design. This 'rule', in place since medieval times, helped to ensure that heraldic designs used on the shield, banner, or surcoat could be easily distinguished at a distance. A black Unicorn on a gold shield is correct (a colour is on a metal), while a black Unicorn on a blue shield wouldn't meet this rule because two colours are against each other. Use the metals, gold (Or) and silver (Argent), to help your design comply with this ancient guideline.
• Colours and certain patterns (furs) used in heraldry are called tinctures. Place your mouse over the shields below to reveal the heraldic name for each tincture. The heraldic description of a coat of arms is called the blazon, and the tinctures are used to describe how the arms are coloured or patterned with fur.

T I N C T U R E S - Colours

T I N C T U R E S - Metals & Furs

Instructions for creating your own shield:

1. print a Shield from the selection below
2. print some pages of clipart
3. colour or paint the Shield and clipart (if using paint you may want to print on heavier paper)
4. cut-out your coloured clipart and paste onto the Shield
   

SHIELDS
LARGE DEVICES
LARGE DEVICES
Medium & Small DEVICES	PAGE 1
Medium & Small DEVICES	PAGE 2
Medium & Small DEVICES	PAGE 3
Medium & Small DEVICES	PAGE 4
A comprehensive source of more than 3,000 additional heraldic devices which can be printed locally and applied to your shield. Click the acorn to view the devices. They are alphabetically ordered.