When creating a new document in Word, scroll through the templates until you find Projects. Under there you will find numerous projects for children. There are many small coloring books ranging from six to eight pages and individual coloring pages of different designs and some are also activity sheets. The coloring books (and a few sheets) cover various holidays including Christmas and Halloween. Other coloring books are of animals -- forest animals, aquatic animals, farm animals and even dinosaurs. And, if you explore a bit, you will find paper dolls to color and cut out and some that do not even need to be colored, just printed and cut. Along with the paper dolls, there are other cut-out designs you can print on magnets that can be used on the refrigerator.

While these are great ideas for putting together a quick project for the kids, with a little creativity and some clip art, or maybe drawing your own images and scanning them, you can put together custom coloring books and projects like a pro! A search on the Internet will bring up lots of free coloring pages and books. And where these are coloring books, you are not using a lot of color inks in your printer, just black. Print, collate and then staple along one side or punch one or several holes and tie together with string or ribbon, keeping it loose enough so that the pages turn. There is always having them bound at your local print shop. So many options!

So, what can you do with these coloring books except give them to your kids? Make them for your nieces or nephews, grandchildren or even your friends’ kids when they come to visit. They can be free to clients as handouts -- maybe even with a theme related to your business, or a “green” theme showing your concern for the environment. Of course, you would have a tag line of “Compliments of” your business name, web site address or other contact information, etc. The coloring books could also be downloads from your web site that could be updated or changed to bring people back to get them.

My last thought on this is while these coloring books can be printed and colored in the traditional way, they can also be colored in on the computer using Paint or other graphic program. Even in Word as I have done in the image. Clicking on the line of each part of the image selects it and the drawing tools in Word become available. This could be a great way to get a child used to using the computer, a mouse and Word. I do a lot of coloring in Photoshop of mandalas I download from a web site that has lots of mandala coloring pages. It is relaxing, creative and has me exploring and learning more about Photoshop’s functions. We should never get too old to learn or to color -- you should give it a try!

To learn about mandalas visit: http://www.mandala-4u.com/en/start.html.
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