Print Your Own Coloring Book [Guest Blog Post By: Carla Eaton]

As we all know, coloring books are a quintessential childhood past time that every family embraces to encourage their child’s creativity. They are fun, educational, and a great way for busy parents to keep children entertained. However, prices can become rather hefty if licensing your child’s favorite cartoon characters, and issues arise if two children want to color the same page. Well, thanks to the internet and your home printer, you can publish your own custom coloring books for just the cost of paper and black ink, and the help of a few web resources.

License Free Favorites
One problem with the more popular coloring books is the price. Most popular characters cost coloring book publishers extensive licensing fees, making even the simplest coloring books a bit overpriced. Fortunately, many websites are popping up that have handled licensing costs and post free pages from popular coloring books online for available download. Websites such as Educational Coloring Pages.com, Coloring Pages Kids.com, and Hello Kids.com have an archive of literally thousands of free coloring pages of your kids’ favorite licensed characters, with the ability to customize the printing aspect to print off images in any form you like. Create a combo coloring book with Spiderman and Barbie, or print off a favorite Disney scene on poster-sized paper.

Color Yourself Creative
What could be more fun than giving your youngster a coloring book of him or herself? More and more websites are emerging that use simple technology to transform any digital picture into a sketch. Try Kusco Cartoon.com to transform your youngster’s photo into a cartoon rendition, or Dumpr.net for a more realistic sketch. Print out the picture in black and white and watch their creativity flow. Even better, other possibilities arise when you use photo modification software (such as Photoshop), which allow you to insert your child into various scenarios with some of their heroes. A personalized coloring book is a real treat, and making it can be a complete snap.

Color and Illustration By: Your Child
Many parents don’t keep all of their children’s doodles around, but in most cases a few special images you can be proud begin to collect on walls and refrigerator doors. By scanning a collection of your child’s own artwork, you can create a coloring book in which they are the illustrator. Start at the first page and create a chronological gallery of drawings they have done to show their progress in mastering shapes and form. Insert enlarged text under each drawing and tell a story about their characters as each page progresses. As your child re-colors their own creations, they’ll start to understand the potential within varying colors while enjoying new insight to their creations.

By becoming the sole publisher of coloring books for your child, you expand on creativity while saving on cash. Let your imagination run wild, and collaborate with your kids’ tastes to make them a coloring book project you’ll both surely enjoy for years to come.

Carla Eaton has a B.A. in Mass Media and writes on the topics of business, technology, and design. She currently blogs for inkfarm.com, who specializes in Canon ink.