9 Creative Things to Do with Finished Coloring Books
Once you have started coloring as a hobby, it becomes an exciting adventure to finish one of your coloring books and try out a new one. There are countless fun new coloring books available today. However, you may be wondering what you can do with your finished coloring books once you’ve moved on to a new one! Instead of letting them sit around your home, we’ve got 9 creative things you can do with your finished coloring books!
Our top 9 creative things you can do with finished coloring books include creating custom coasters, framing the coloring page and hanging it up, creating greeting cards, making fun bookmarks, using it as gift wrap, creating a personalized journal, donating your coloring pages to a children’s hospital, raffling your colored art for a charity, and decorating your current or older photo frames you have around your home.
Create Custom Coasters
For many of us, our coloring pages are full of vibrant and fun color. This is one of the many reasons why we love using colored pages to create home décor, like custom coasters. Instead of having ordinary coasters at home, custom coasters made with your coloring pages make a bright addition to your home and also give your space a personalized touch.
Creating your own coasters is also relatively easy! All you need is either a square piece of wood or tile, spray mount, Mod Podge, an X-acto knife, a foam brush, and clear acrylic spray. Once you’ve picked what coloring page you want to use, you want to spray both the back of the coloring page and your piece of wood or tile with the spray mount.
Then you’ll place the sticky side of your wood or tile to the sticky side of your coloring page. You’ll want to use the X-acto knife to cut off the excess part of your coloring page and make your edges smooth. Applying the Mod Podge will make your coasters waterproof. Once it dries, you’ll want to use the clear acrylic spray to seal and complete your coasters!
Two other major reasons why we love using coloring pages to create custom coasters are the coasters are fun to make and you can use them for personalized gifts! Similar to coloring, creating crafts can be a very relaxing activity! Your friends and family will know that you put a lot of work into the coasters (both doing the coloring and creating the coasters), so the gift will have even more value.
Frame Your Coloring Pages
Your coloring pages can make excellent home décor options! With the fun and vibrant colors, it will add a personalized and bright touch to any walls around your home. Framing your coloring pages and hanging them around your home is an easy option if you’re looking for things to do with your finished coloring books.
To frame your coloring pages and hang them around your home, all you need to do is make sure you have the measurements of your coloring page and then find a frame you love. If you are working with a small budget, you can even find frames at your local discount stores that will still work great for hanging around your home.
Like many of our other favorite options for things to do with your finished coloring books, framing your coloring pages can also make an excellent gift idea! This can be especially true for children or teenage girls. The vibrant colors in your coloring pages will bring them joy when they regularly look at it framed on their wall!
Create Greeting Cards
Coloring pages make an excellent foundation for a large variety of greeting cards. You can use coloring pages to make invitations, thank you cards, holiday cards or even just cards to say hello. Similar to creating custom coasters, creating greeting cards is a fun and simple way to use your finished coloring books!
To create your greeting cards, you want to buy white craft paper that has a decent thickness to it. You can fold your card in half and create your design on the front. We recommend combining both cut outs from your coloring pages and also writing. For example: If it’s a birthday card, you can hand write “Happy Birthday” on the front of the card and then glue on a fun design to go with it.
If you are creating holiday cards, you can use holiday themed coloring books to make the perfect addition. Using coloring pages to create greeting cards gives your cards an even more personalized touch and shows your loved ones how much you care.
On the inside of your greeting card, you can use vibrant markers or gel pens to write out a personalized message to your loved one. You can add more of your coloring pages to the inside of the card as well. The best part about creating your own greeting cards is you can make it however you want!
If you don’t want your greeting card to fold, you can use cardstock to make your card instead. This works great for invitations! First, you will want to cut out your cardstock to match the shape and size you want for the card. Then on one side of the cardstock, you can glue your coloring book designs. On the other side, you can write out any note or details you want!
Make Fun Bookmarks
As you may be able to tell, we love using our finished coloring books to create new items! Creating new items with our finished coloring books is not only fun, but it’s also great for the environment. For all of the readers who also enjoy coloring, making fun book marks is an excellent way to give your finished coloring books a new purpose!
To create your own bookmarks, you will need the coloring pages you want to use, white or colored cardstock, scissors and paper friendly glue. You will want to start by cutting the cardstock into the size you’d like for your bookmark. The most common shape for bookmarks is a long rectangle so it stays nicely in your book. However, you can use any shape you want for your own bookmarks!
Once you have your shape cut out in your cardstock, you will want to glue your coloring page to the top of your cardstock. You want to make sure that you place the specific section of your coloring page you want to use on top of your cardstock since this is the section that will be used for your bookmark.
We recommend allowing the glue to dry first. Then you can cut off the excess part of the coloring page with your scissors, making sure your bookmark has precise and smooth edges. Then, your bookmark is complete!
If you want to make your bookmark extra special, you can use a hole bunch at the top of the book mark and then place small ribbon through the hole on the top. This will help your bookmark stand out easily when you are looking for your place in your book!
Use Coloring Pages as Gift Wrap
Finished coloring books can also make fun gift wrap options for any occasion! Gift wrap made out of coloring pages gives your gift an even more personalized touch. It’s also great for the environment, since you won’t be purchasing extra gift wrap. Plus, we love that it’s easy to use coloring pages as gift wrap and requires very few supplies!
If you are wrapping a gift that isn’t extremely small, you may need to combine multiple coloring pages to use as your gift wrap. We recommend combining pages that have similar colors used throughout the designs. When you combine the pages, you will want to cut off any blank white spaces along the edges. You can use paper friendly glue to combine the coloring pages as well.
If you are combining multiple coloring pages to make gift wrap, we recommend letting the glue completely dry before using it as gift wrap. This will allow the pages to work as gift wrap a lot easier and will prevent the pages from coming apart.
Create a Personalized Journal
Using finished coloring books to create new items makes your new items really come to life. Using coloring pages to create a new journal gives your journal an even more personalized touch and adds more meaning to the journal.
For the easiest option, we recommend buying a blank notebook that has already been made unless you desire to create your own notebook as well from blank paper. If you use a composition notebook that has already been created, you can buy paper friendly glue and then attach your coloring pages to the outside of your new journal.
You can attach your coloring pages to both the front and the back of the notebook! If you are really feeling creative, you can also design your own opening page for your journal. One thing to keep in mind about creating a personalized journal is these also make great gift ideas! You can give a personalized journal to one of your loved ones for a birthday or holiday gift.
Donate Your Coloring Pages to a Children’s Hospital
All forms of art are known for cheering us up by creating it and even just look at it as well. When we are around fun and vibrant color, it tends to put us in a better mood and lift our spirits. This is why we love the idea of donating our coloring pages to hospitals, especially children’s hospitals.
You can donate your coloring pages on their own to children’s hospitals. You can also frame them, so the coloring pages can be hung in various rooms for patients. We also love the idea of turning our coloring pages into personalized journals and then donating the journals to children’s hospitals as well. This gives the children a chance to express themselves through words, along with cheering them up when they look at your beautiful design.
If you are looking to volunteer your time and spend an afternoon in a children’s hospital, you can also bring along a few of your finished coloring books and then create crafts with the children in the hospital. You can turn fold the coloring pages into various shapes or designs.
You can also bring along your own supplies and help the children create their own personalized greeting cards using your completed coloring pages. By giving the children the opportunity to create their own crafts and greeting cards, it gives them a chance to get their mind off being in the hospital and allows them to enjoy being a kid!
Raffle Your Colored Art for Charity
Another great thing you can do with your finished coloring pages that also helps a great cause is raffling off your colored art and then donating the proceeds to a charity close to your heart. There are so many people that love both purchasing art and also helping causes that are close to their hearts.
Some of the ways you can raffle your colored art is sharing through social media or donating your colored pages to a fundraiser that is hosting a raffle already. If you share your colored art through social media, you can let all of your friends and family know about the cause you are raising money for and then also ask them to share as well.
If you tell the charity or the non profit that you’re raising money for them with your coloring pages, they might also be able to help and send more potential buyers your way. Framing your coloring pages before raffling them can also help them sell quickly! When raffling your coloring pages, make sure to let people know that it’s going to charity, too.
Decorate Current Photo Frames
Our last favorite creative thing you can do with your finished coloring books includes adding a personalized touch to an item you likely already have at home! We love decorating our current or older photo frames with our coloring pages to add pops of color and make the photo frames come to life with our own designs!
Decorating your current photo frames is actually an easy project! We recommend using photo frames that have at least a thickness of an inch. If the frame isn’t an inch on each side, then it may be difficult to attach your coloring page correctly. We also recommend putting a piece of cardboard or cloth over the glass part of the photo frame, so it is protected during the process of attaching the coloring pages.
For this project, you will need a photo frame, an X-acto knife, spray mount, Mod Podge, a foam brush and clear acrylic spray. To start, you want to lay your coloring page over the photo frame and then use the X-acto knife to cut out the sections. We recommend doing one side at a time, until you’ve cut out strips for all four sides of the photo frame.
Once you have four strips to cover each of the sides of the photo frame, you want to put the spray mount on both the back of your coloring page and lightly on the top of the photo frame (only on the frame, not the glass). Then you want to put the coloring page on the photo frame, so each side with the spray mount is touching.
We recommend completing all of the sides first and then letting the frame dry before continuing. Once the coloring page has been mounted to each side of the photo frame and it has dried, you want to apply the Mod Podge with the foam brush. This helps your photo frame become more durable. Then once it has dried, you want to spray with the clear acrylic spray. This will your photo frame to seal together and be complete!
Personalized photo frames also make a thoughtful gift idea! You can print off a picture of you and your loved one, then put it in your personalized frame and gift it to your loved one for their birthday or Christmas! Handmade and personalized gifts are always appreciated!
Related Questions:
1. Can coloring books be recycled once I’m done with them?
Yes, you can recycle most coloring books once you are done with them. However, it will also depend on what materials you’ve used in your coloring book and the specific area that you live. In most areas, recycling companies will have their own specific guidelines on what can and can’t be recycled properly in their facilities.
If you’ve used paint or any sort of material that contains oil in your coloring book, then you won’t be able to recycle the coloring book. Any item that contains oil or heavy wax will not be able to be recycled in most recycling facilities.
2. Is it possible to draw my own designs for coloring?
Yes, you can definitely create your own designs for coloring! Even if you haven’t drawn much before, drawing is a hobby you can easily begin and continually improve on with more practice. Drawing your own designs for coloring gives you the ability to improve two skills while working on the same art project.
As you improve your drawing skills, you can even sell your designs for coloring! With the wide popularity of coloring books today, you can make extra money selling your designs or creating your own coloring book as well!
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Please note: This blog post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or medical advice. Please consult a legal expert or medical doctor to address your specific needs.
