DIY Colouring Book | Last Minute DIY Christmas Presents

It's almost Christmas and I really wanted to create these series of Last minute DIY Christmas presents Instructables to give you ideas for unique personalised DIY Christmas gifts.

I decided to do this DIY colouring book/ sheets as I had a nice collection of selfies with my two lovely friends and I thought the colouring books would make cute personalised presents for them. I then ended up colouring them in myself, but it can be easily printed again and again! :) You can create cheap DIY Christmas presents that are expensive looking and more importantly have that touch of uniqueness about them. It's lovely to make prersonalized gifts! You can make cool DIY gifts for friends, family or your other half and show them that you actually care! :)

I really hope you find them useful and that they give you some inspiration for making DIY Christmas presents. I still think the best Christmas presents are the ones you make yourself anyway! :)

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Step 1: You Can Watch My Video Tutorial Here :)

You can watch my video tutorial here or read written instructions in the next steps. Or both :)

Step 2: What You Will Need

Here is the list of materials I used in this Easy DIY:

Editing program - I was using Picmonkey.com - I pay a bit extra for the Royal membership, but it's not a lot (something like $3 a month and it's totally worth it as I use it all the time!). If you don't want to do this, you can easily download a free sketch app to your phone or computer, use Photoshop or do it the good old way by tracing over NCR(no carbon required)paper and then a marker pen.

gold ribbon

All purpose glue (super glue)

A4 and A3 200gsm drawing card (Fabriano Artist Paper)

something blunt to score the card

scissors

ruler

printer

Step 3: In the Editing Program...

As I have mentioned in the previous step, I am signed for a Royal membership with Picmonkey.com, therefore I have all these options available. See the alternative in the 'What you'll need' step.

Using Picmonkey open your picture to edit. Go to effects and scroll down to find the Edge Sketch effect. Bring the thickness and level of details to the maximum(or just play with it to see what works best)

Then go to Touch Up option. Choose mascara and with the full strength go over the eyes and features you would like to enhance. I went over the main lines, but left soft shadows out. To make the picture look even better, edit it beforehand with Wrinkle remover tool - go over the skin on light setting, this will make the faces look smoother when you transform it into the sketch.

Go to the Basic Edits and choose sharpen. Bring the clarity to a maximum and play with the sharpness option.

Hit save, make sure it's being saved as a reasonable size as you will be printing it out later. Mine was I think 4MB, you can go even a bit higher. You can choose between Roger-Pierce-Sean or change the size manually. Just simply change the first number of the first size and it will resize it automatically. But don't go to high, I think it's usually about 7000 or so maximum. Then it will say it's too large.

That's the main picture out of the way, lets do the cover now.

Open new document (Design - custom size)- I went with A4 size as that's the standard in my country, but you can choose any size you want. Convert the size into pixels by literally just Googling it :) (A4 size in pixels)

Then select the text option and type your quote and change the font, colour etc. usual stuff... I added the clovers as a little touch - Go to Google and type 'clover png' (png means transparent background) Open the image and save it to your computer. Go back to editing and choose Overlay - Your overlay and find the file. then adjust it as needed. Once happy with the cover, save it to your computer. Again, make sure the size it big enough.

Once again, open another document-I went with A4 again. Add overlay - your own, choose the quote and move it to the top horizontally. Save, then print on a nice thick drawing paper. You can use inkjet or laser printer, mine were printed on laser.

Step 4: The Cover

Turn your cover upside down and find the middle, then using a ruler and a blunt object(in my case a fork) score the card. Only do this once and gently. I went over it twice and the edge got ripper on the bottom - that's why I then went for the ribbon to hide it :)! (But I'm glad I did as it looks so much better now! :) So if you want your cover to look as festive as mine, glue a nice gold ribbon around the crease with a strong glue. Wait for it to dry, then fold. I also punched two holes on the back and front page of the cover (in the middle on the long edge) and then added a thinner gold ribbons to tie the cover and make a nice decorative bow that look like a four leaf clover :)

Step 5: Done!

You can give this as a colouring book with some coloured pencils the way I created it, have it bound in your local printers(if you end up with a lot of loose sheets), or just give it in a frame with coloured pencils. Or have fun and colour it in and then give it to your loved ones! :) The possibilities are endless... almost... :)

If you liked this tutorial, then don't forget to follow me and if you really want to support my creative mind, you can even subscribe to my YouTube channel(on the intro page) :) That way I'll know somebody actually appreciates my little creative outbursts :))))

xxx