Make a Great Coloring Book

Kids love coloring books whether they are justfor fun or as a learning tool. Here are some tips for putting togetheryour own coloring book.

Kids love coloring books, whether they are justfor fun or as a learning tool. Here are some tips for putting togetheryour own coloring book.

Decide on a Theme

For instance, if you are a teacher you may want to create a coloringbook that relates to what you are covering in class (National Parks,the First Thanksgiving, etc.). Same goes if you are just creating agift for a child, though in that case, it might be fun to create acoloring book that is based on people and places that he or she isfamiliar with, a recent outing, or whatever the child happens to befascinated with at the time (sports, cowboys, dogs, etc).

If you are a company that is looking to create a great marketing tool,or just something to keep the kids happily busy while you do businesswith the parents, a fun little coloring book that is somehow related toyour industry may be just the thing. This would be a great idea for,say, an auto dealership, among other businesses.

Create The Pages

There are a few different ways to go about this. If you areartistically inclined, you can draw the pages yourself by hand, or onthe computer using some drawing software. If you don't have these sortsof talents yourself, you can enlist the help of a professional graphicartist. Some photo editing software programs such as Photoshop allowyou to alter photos in such a way that they resemble black and whiteline drawings, and you may be able to use these, at least as a startingoff point.

The images you use should be compelling and complex enough to be fun tocolor, but not so dense that you can't easily tell what a given objectis. Remember the age of your audience when you are putting thistogether. You can make it both fun and challenging with a little bit ofeffort.

Create (or get your artist to create) a nice looking, color title and cover that conveys the theme of your coloring book.

Organize it.

Decide how you want to organize the pages of your book within yourtheme (chronologically, etc.) and place them within yourdocument-creation software. From here, you will want to make PDF pagesof your coloring book making sure that the fonts are embedded. If youare using MS Word, or Acrobat Professional, you can use the PDFcreation application within those programs. If not, there are a fewfree PDF-creation programs available online.

Bind it.

There are a few options to consider here when it comes to bindingstyle, but some of the most logical would be plastic comb binding,spiral coil binding, or thermal (hardcover) binding. Take a look aroundonline or head down to your local printer to see what binding styleworks best for you. If you are going to be creating a fair number ofcoloring books, now or in the future, you may want to look into owningyour own binding machine. They are less expensive than you might think,and most are rather easy to use as well.

Article Tags: Coloring Book