Promises Kept.

How to make a homemade coloring book:

Photos for the project can be found here.
For this project I used Windows photo gallery but the instructions should be able to be applied to whatever photo program your computer uses.

1.What you need to do first is crop and adjust the photo you want to use so it is a large enough size and focuses on the image you want to reproduce for the coloring book.
(with Windows Photo Gallery you will go up to Fix on the Header Menu and click on "Crop")2. Second, you will want to adjust the color saturation of the photo so it appears on screen as black and white.
( this will be under "Saturation" in the fix menu)
3. Next you must adjust the exposure of the photo to your liking. You will do this under the exposure link of the Fix menu and you will use the moveable bar thingy to adjust how bright, dark, and contrasted the photo is.
The point of this step is to get the image as stark as possible; highlighting the important elements that you want to be able to draw and getting rid of all unnecessary shadows and shades.
4. Next you are going to trace the image onto tracing paper. If you want to do this the longer slightly more tedious way, you will print the picture out on a home printer and trace away. I traced the images for Miss R.'s book right off my laptop screen. If you go this route be VERY careful not to poke your screen. And please please, tape the paper you are tracing on to the screen so there is no slipping around of the paper.
5. If you traced in pencil then go over it with dark pen or black marker and trace it once again onto a sheet of plain white paper for the coloring book. I used a black fine tip marker for my original tracing and used only the final sheet of paper I wanted for my coloring book, so I did this the risky way, but I've been doing this for a while now, so do what feels comfortable for you.
6. Assembling your coloring book is totally up to you. You could do it the fabulous way Ginny does on her blog here by tracing your images so they fit two to a 8x 10 sheet and using a sewing machine to bind the pages together with a cover. Or you can be wild and carefree like I was and just put them all in a clip board. ( I chose this method because I wanted Miss R.'s mom to be able to possibly frame pages she liked later on.
really your creativity is the limit, so go nuts and have fun!

You may want to at least try to stay in the lines when coloring though ;)