A Rainbow of Love on Mother’s Day

A card colored by you makes a wonderful Mother’s Day gift!

Click here to download a free card that you can print and color.  

free Mother's Day Card

You can even add your own poem or special message for your mom, grandmother or other special person in your life.

For more fun, make a bouquet of flowers by printing out the card two or three times, coloring and cutting out the flowers on the page, and trying them with a pretty bow or ribbon.

Colorful Learning

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.  ~ Claude Monet

Learning colors

Identifying colors by their shades and names will advance children’s development as learners and artists.  Being able to name a color will help them make sense of their world and build language skills, too.  Here are a few activities to teach young children about colors.

Preschool-aged children

Here's a crayon-tastic activity for younger children.  Find a picture of a basic color wheel online or create your own: using a paper plate, divide it into 4-6 sections and color each section in one color.  Place the used crayons in a bag or box to mix the up.  Then ask the child which crayon made each color and match it to the appropriately colored area.  Extend this activity by walking around the house with the crayons and matching the colors to objects you find together.  Consider taking the color wheel on your next trip to the park, grocery store, or library and locate objects that match the appropriate color.

School aged-children

For this mauve-alous activity, you will need different colors of food coloring, at least 6 empty plastic water bottles or see-through drinking cups, and water.  Fill the containers them with the same amount of water and then add the same amount of red food coloring drops to each.  Set one pure red water solution aside.  In the second container, add yellow food coloring drops -- how many yellow drops will it take for the color to change?  Set that one aside and add a few more yellow drops to the red-colored water.  Set this newly-created color aside and add a few more yellow drops to another container of red water.  Repeat the process and arrange the colored waters in a row from lightest to darkest colors.  What should the name of each color be? 

Enjoy this color experiment again and again using yellow or blue as the starting color and red as the added color.

 

It’s So Easy Being Green and Light Green, Dark Green, Olive Green, Lime Green..

With Earth Day right around the corner, we can all think about ways in which we can do our share while having fun and being creative.  Look for coloring books that are made with recycled paper and soy-based inks; this saves trees and resources.

Here are some creative ways to reuse your finished coloring pages.

For gifts - Use pages as wrapping paper or cut out your picture and glue it on a plain paper bag to make a unique gift bag.  You can also cut pages in different shapes and sizes to make greeting cards and gift tags.

For home – Take your favorite pages to a local copy shop and laminate them so they can become place mats.  You can even cut up the laminated pages into smaller shapes and now you have wonderful ornaments for a Christmas tree, objects for a hanging mobile,  or decorations for your bedroom. 

For making memories – There are so many ways you can use coloring book pages for a scrapbook.  Use the pages as a background and place pictures on top.  Or cut up your coloring design into shapes and letters as decoration for your pages. 

For someone else – Brighten up someone’s day by giving them a picture you colored.  Create a story based on the pictures you colored.  Write out the words below the pictures and you have a book you can read and share. 

For some fabulous bling – Make your own beaded jewelry with your coloring books!  To make paper beads, cut long, skinny triangles out of your pages.  Turn the triangle so the colored side faces down and dab a bit of glue at the long, pointy end.  Starting at the wide end, roll the triangle using a pencil, marker, crayon, toothpick, or any other round tool.  The smaller the tool, the smaller your bead will be.  Roll tightly.  Glue the tip of the triangle to the rolled paper.  To make your beads last longer, you can coat them with clear glue or clear nail polish.  String your beads together and you now have a one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry!

Fruits, Veggies and a Box of Crayons: Why Coloring is Good for You

On the list of healthy activities for bodies and minds every any age should be coloring.  Here are just some of the reasons why coloring is healthy for you:

Coloring builds muscles.  Gripping a crayon, pencil or marker develops the tiny muscles in your hands and fingers, which will help you in doing activities like writing, typing, and even tying your shoe.  When you make fine details or work to stay within the lines of a picture, you are exercising your hand-eye coordination. 

Coloring can be an opportunity to learn.  Use the pictures in coloring books to identify shapes.  Use the text to practice reading or finding recognizable letters and words.  Create your own sentences if none are provided.  Of course, coloring helps you learn all about color – the different names of colors, how they look next to each other, and even the unique feelings they bring out in the artist.

Coloring enhances creativity.  Yes, it is possible to think outside of the box when you are coloring within the lines!  Within the borders or lines the possibilities are endless:  create several different patterns and designs within the shapes on a coloring book page.

Coloring teaches patience.  It can take time to complete a picture and color in everything just the way you want it.  With practice and patience, you can see your progress on the page.  You can take your time when you color.  Sometimes you may even have to put your drawing down and return to it at a later time when you are ready to finish it.  Be sure to save some of your favorite artwork in a special place so that you can go back to them and look how you’ve grown as an artist.    

Coloring relieves stress and makes you feel good  Sitting down to color can be a soothing activity for many people.  You can listen to your favorite music when you color or even sit with a good friend and color together.  Drawing pictures of your favorite things or making a picture to give as a gift are two ways to brighten anyone’s day!

What else can you learn from coloring?

 

Giving the gift of color – a project for kids and grown-ups to do together

Having a party with a special theme?  Looking for a gift for a special artist?  A simply mauve-lous idea is to give a coloring book fit for the occasion with crayons thoughtfully made by you!  This is also a great way to recycle old, broken crayons, too.

Personalized Coloring Books

Candy molds come in all shapes and sizes.  Find one that fits your fancy.  Next, remove the paper wrappers off the crayons.  Break the crayons of the same color family into small pieces or shavings and place into a small, microwave-safe container. With the help of a grown-up, set the microwave to medium heat for 4-5 minutes or until all the pieces have melted.  Pour the melted mixture into the candy molds.  Adding different colors into the same mold will produce a crayon of many colors.  Freeze the molds for 20 minutes and the crayons will easily pop out.  

Get Red-y, Get Set, Gogh!

Welcome to the Really Big Coloring Books Blog! Here’s a space that’s colorfully fun, where I can teach you a rainbow of facts and tips about coloring.

My name is Indi Gogh and I love to color.  Green, pink, purple, red, blue, yellow… so many great choices and possibilities!  I always keep a bunch of crayons and markers in my backpack so I can color wherever I go. I like to brighten people’s days by sharing a page out of my favorite coloring book.

Here’s a bright idea you can try -- decorate your home with “stained glass butterflies”.  You will need a little bit of olive oil, some paper towels, some crayons and of course, paper or your favorite coloring book of butterflies.  When you are finished coloring a page, pour a little olive oil on a paper towel and gently rub it onto the page.  As the oil is absorbed, the paper will begin to turn translucent, or clear when light shines through.  Once the oil is completely absorbed, let the page dry for several hours.  Then put your page up to the light and it will look like your very own stained glass creation!  

What can you do with the pages from coloring books?  I'd love to hear from you! 

Colorfully Yours, Indi

The World's Coloring Book Home Page

www.ColoringBook.com is one of the nation's most inclusive web pages for coloring books. Owned and operated by Really Big Coloring Books, Inc. ® (RBCB) of Saint Louis, Missouri, this web site is designed for anyone who loves coloring.  We look forward to hearing from artists, illustrators, writers, educators and coloring fans of all ages who wish to buy, create or sell coloring books.

Publishing coloring books for nearly 30 years, RBCB, invites everyone to come and play. We can create for you, your family or company a single coloring page or an entire coloring book masterpiece.

The company Really Big Coloring Books, Inc. ® has four basic divisions: Retail, Fundraising, Educational and the Internet.

Please call 1-800-244-2665 or email info@bigcoloringbooks.com for any coloring page or coloring book needs!