A HOMEMADE PERSONALIZED COLORING BOOK
This is a silly, kooky, personal gift. Before you go off and say “That’s for kids,” think again. My coloring book screams fun.
What You Need:
* Tracing paper.
* Permanent black marker.
* Plain white paper.
* Stapler.
The How-To:
If you’re among the lucky whom are naturally good drawers, throw that tracing paper away and just start sketching simple black and white line drawings. But if you’re like me and you can’t really draw all that well on your own, pick up the tracing paper. There is no shame in tracing!
The topic will depend entirely on whom the gift is for. If the pal loves horses, trace or draw pictures of horses. If your friend worships emo bands, start drawing or tracing pictures of her favorites! Shoes? No sweat, make a shoe coloring book! What about the Jonas Brothers? Go ahead and MAKE A JONAS BROTHERS COLORING BOOK. Whatever the topic—fashion, soccer greats, Harry Potter—find pictures online or in magazines and just trace over them with clean, black lines. You can add text to the bottom and tell a story, or provide captions for each picture, or you could leave it blank. Don’t forget to make a cover, too, perhaps incorporating your pal’s name into the title of the book.
Take your tracing paper or original drawings to a copy shop and photocopy them on to your blank paper. If you’re copying tracing paper, place a piece of white paper behind the tracing paper on the bed of the copy machine so you get a bright white backdrop to your coloring pages. You could even copy these drawings on to newsprint for that old-school, little kid coloring book feel. Copy the front cover of your book on to cardstock, and do the same for the back cover.
Put the pages in order, add the cover, and staple. Do so by adding three staples in the left margin on your book— one at the top, one centered and one at the bottom. This is a great gift idea if you need to make multiple presents, because you could effortlessly make two or more copies of the coloring pages while you’re at the copy shop.
Make it an Extra Special Gift: C’mon, throw in the crayons! A small pack costs less than a buck and will really make this present zing. Throw the coloring book and the crayons into a manila envelope decorated with stickers and doodles, and you’ve got yourself one way cool, way wild present! Or how about adding a box of super cool colored pencils? You could even take the pencils out of their ordinary box and wrap them up sleeping bag style in a lovely little scrap of fabric, tied into a bow with a ribbon. Sweet!
