DIY Coloring Books and Crayon Boxes

As promised, here’s a detailed look at how to make your own coloring books as well as free printable crayon boxes!

I made these mini coloring books to be included in the goody bags at Adelaide’s Princess Party (see more here and here) but these would be wonderful to have on hand for any occasion where kids will be around, and need something to occupy them (so all the time, then?).

The size is completely up to you! I decided to make them 5″ x 6″ because thats about the largest size I could fit onto an regular Letter size piece of paper.

The first thing I did was a Google search for “coloring pages”. Include the theme of your choice in your search to narrow down the results.

Once you’ve found and downloaded all of your coloring pages, the next thing you’ll need to do is create a print layout for your coloring book. This can be done in a word processing application (like Word or Pages) or an image editing application (like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator). What you need to do is get your images side by side, centered on the page. Like this:

 

It doesn’t matter if your images fill the page or are in nice, neat little clipping masks like mine. All that really matters is there is an invisible line down the middle of your page and the two pages of your coloring book meet there.

Once you have two or more pages set up like this, it’s time to print. Print page 1, then take that paper, flip it over and put it back in your printer to print page two. What you’ll end up with is a double sided print.

I had to upgrade my printer paper to something a little heavier weight (90# instead of 80#) so that the images didn’t show through to the other side.

Once you have your prints, it’s time to cut out your pages! Make sure you don’t cut your pages in half though 😉

Finally, stack your pages in the order you want, and add a cover. It can be another piece of printer paper, or fun-colored card stock—be as creative as you want!

Now you get to choose how you want to bind your mini-book. If your book is small enough (or your stapler long enough) you can staple the center of the book. My book was not small enough (nor my stapler long enough) so I used a needle and some baker’s twine to tie my book together.

Then you can decide what you want to do with the cover, if anything! I put stickers on mine :

 

Of course, you can’t use your new coloring books without crayons! And these little crayon boxes are adorable!

I’ve created a free printable template with the princess and knight artwork for your downloading pleasure. There is also a blank template, so you can make your own!

 

Download “Princess and Knight Crayon Box”

 

I hope this inspires you to make some of your own coloring books!