Making a Coloring Book for a Child

Children love gifts. Gifts of all kinds big and small can bring a smile of delight to their young faces that can light the world. Gifts that are personal can become precious vessels of sentimental value to a person as they are growing up and even after they are adults with children of their own. there are some personal gifts from childhood that are saved and which are shown to our own children, and some of which there are only photos of and a great story that goes along with them. If you have a child in your life and you want to give them a personal gift that they may cherish for the rest of their lives, one such gift could be a personalized coloring book. A personal coloring book, as opposed to one which you would buy in a store, would have a mix of images that would be chosen by you, to have personal significance to the child. This article is full of suggestions and ideas to help you to create a coloring book for a young child that they may cherish and keep forever. They may even take the idea, in the future and make a similar coloring book for their child.

Images

Selecting images for your coloring book will be the first step in the process. The local library is a great place to find and copy such images. You could also use the internet to find images that you want to include. When you put your coloring book together you may wish to include the photocopy of the image on the facing page for the child to use as a guide when choosing colors. Or you may want to allow them license to color the pictures with whatever colors they see fit. If they like horses, or racecars, or dinosaurs, then you are truly in luck as images both new and old are easy to find. They are also often easy to trace. Personally though I prefer using themes that are all about us, the child and myself, and which represent our connection. Like if the child is dying to go to Disneyland or some other theme park and you take them, take tons of pictures. Not just of the child but of the attractions, the promenades, and the characters that are walking around. Every child who has ever gone to Disneyland regardless of age from 2 to 82 has that obligatory picture of themselves with their favorite character. Such photos will make a wonderful coloring book.

Select 20-40 images that you want to include in your coloring book. Since photos are already colored in you will have to transfer these images to a blank page, without transferring the color, and in many cases with quite a bit less detail. Before you stop reading this protesting that you cannot draw, this project is not about your artistic ability, and I wouldn't put you to that kind of strain. Everyone knows how to trace things. Everyone when they were young, has taken a piece of paper, laid the paper over an image that we liked, and then traced the ghost image that we could see through the paper. Some of us used onion skin paper or tracing paper that made it very easy to see the lines of the image beneath. If this is the way that you prefer to capture your images, then that is fine. Here are three suggestions that work as well if not better than using old fashioned tracing paper method.

1. Carbon paper- Print a copy of the image that you want to use. Take a piece of carbon paper and a sheet of unlined white paper, printer paper will do and put them one atop the other, with your image on top and the carbon paper in between. To hold the pages steady through out the process you may want to staple them together or staple the sheets together on each side. This is to keep your pages as still as possible while you trace the lines of the picture with a pen or stylus. When you are done drawing the elements which you want to include in the coloring book image, you will have your uncolored picture beneath on the piece of paper which you were transferring the image to. One good thing about carbon paper is that it gives you a good, strong, dark outline. The darker your lines and shading the easier it will be to transfer the image to a more colorfast medium. This is an old tried and true method that works quire well.

2. Backlighting your image- If you are using photographs, slides, or pictures on your computer you can backlight the image and place your transfer paper on top of the image so that you can see the image clearly through your blank sheet. A lot of people immediately think of a lit drafting table or x ray box that doctors use for backlighting an image. Actually it is much easier, if you aren't a doctor or an architect, to get backlighting than you think.

If you have a glass top table you can simply place a lamp with a bright bulb beneath the table so that the light shines up through the table. If you don't have any glass topped furniture, not to worry! Tape your image to a window that the sunlight is shining through, then tape your blank transfer sheet over the picture, and voila! A backlit image on a smooth, hard surface that is perfect for drawing on. This also works if you want to use your computer monitor and a digital photo, or a slide that you can either transfer to DVD, or CD Rom and then display it on your television screen.

3. Projecting your image. If the image that you are transferring is on an old fashioned slide or you have an overhead projector of some kind. (many people do have slide projectors or projectors attached to their laptop or desktop computer systems.) Project your image onto a sheet of paper and trace over the lines.

When you are tracing your images it is best to use an art pencil with extra dark lead or a charcoal pencil. If you are really good at tracing you may wish to use a pen so that your lines are dark enough to register on a photo copier. After you finish tracing out your images. Place a backing page behind the paper that your image is on so that the lines come out distinct. Then take each of your images and photocopy them. Print out copies of each of the photos or pictures that you used for the coloring book images. Place each of these pictures opposite the coloring book image. This will give the child a reference point when choosing colors

After you have gotten, traced, copied, and ordered your content, you will need to bind the book and put a cover on it. Of course the easiest way is to cut a piece of poster board to size, fit the pages into the cover and fold the poster board over and under so that there is a slight crease in the poster board. Remove the pages and crease the cover so that it will conform to the specific width and height or your book. Open the poster board back up for and using regular school glue. Saturate the entire area between the two creases. You want to use a fairly large amount of glue, and it is best to spread the glue using your finger or a paintbrush to distribute the glue evenly throughout the spine of your book.

After you spread the glue into the spine, wipe of any excess glue that may have gotten on the inside of your front and back covers, outside of the creases. Make sure that all of your pages are as evenly stacked as you can make them. You may even want to paper clip them together at the outside edge to ensure that the pages stay neat and even within the margins of the cover. Once you have bound your book set it on a flat, hard surface to dry. You may want to place your coloring book with the pages against a wall or the edge of another book. For the best result place something heavy against the bound side of the book to keep the book from settling or shifting during the drying process. Finally you will place a book of comparable size atop the newly bound book and allow the coloring book to dry overnight. When the child receives the book they will be delighted to see that the images are of them, their family, and of the special events in their lives.