And school’s out for summer! Can you believe it? I can’t believe it. I don’t know how the rest of you feel when the kids are home all summer, but I always vacillate between total contentment that we’re all together and absolute despair that my house will never be clean (or quiet) again. I haven’t figured out how to solve the noise/mess problem yet, but I DO have a fun art project today that your kids will love: personalized coloring pages.
Yep, that’s right, you can take any photo and turn it into a coloring page for your kids. It’s awesome! My kids have never been the type to sit and color quietly for hours at a time (are any kids that type?) but they LOVE coloring in pictures of themselves! I can already tell this project is going to fill lots of time this summer.
I mean, cool, right? And wouldn’t the picture below make an awesome Father’s Day gift?
Personalized Coloring Pages
Not only are these pages fun to color, they’re also great for painting, too! I turned a beach photo of my husband and son into a coloring page and printed it out on watercolor paper. Then I let my 7 year old loose with some kids’ watercolor paints:
I gave him a few tips on how to use water to blend the colors, and we were both pretty impressed with the final result!
And here’s one my 5-year-old painted:
Personalized coloring pages from a favorite photo are extremely easy to make using Adobe Photoshop Elements. If you’re totally bummed now because you don’t have Photoshop Elements, don’t worry, just enter the giveaway at the end of the post! I’m giving away a copy of Photoshop Elements AND Premiere Elements this week. Thank you to Adobe for sponsoring this post & giveaway.
How to turn a photo into a personalized coloring page
Alright, here’s the how-to. This is dead simple and I made a screencast of the process so you can follow along.
How to turn a photo into a coloring page (or line drawing) using Photoshop Elements:
A few final notes:
- Some photos do work better than others, so if the first one you try doesn’t turn out great, give another one a go.
- Before you start the process in Photoshop Elements, you can use the Levels box (ctrl-L) to brighten the whites and darken the darks. This can help give a cleaner-looking result final.
*****And now for the giveaway!*****
To enter to win a copy of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, just leave me a comment telling me why you’d like to win.
Must be 18 or older and live in the United States to win. Giveaway will close May 31st at midnight. Winner will be contacted by email (so please leave yours!) and will have 24 hours to email back to claim the prize or a different winner will be chosen.
Love photo projects? Click here for 40 more craft projects you can make with photos!
Cynthia Thomson says
I would love to win this to make pictures for my daughter to color. A colored persolalized picture would make a great father’s day gift!
Gina says
Is it at all possible to buy a photo to color or paint? PLEASE! I have a 45 year old niece that has ALS. She is having a birthday but is bedridden and can’t move. She has a feeding tube and can’t eat, other than via a feeding tube. She also has a trachea for breathing assistance.She has a 10 year old son so we are wanting to make this party fun for him which is what makes her happiest. We’d like to have a glamping (glamorous camping party) Make a tent over her hospital bed, decorate it with lights, make smore pops for him. She can’t speak but has the ability to use an eye gaze to communicate. We’d like to read books, play camp games in and near her bed. He could paint or color a picture of the two of them in the tent. Her party is May 16th. Due to the Coronavirus we can’t invite friends or other family members so we are searching and grasping for ideas. If you could help and I could buy some of these that would be answered prayer. Thank you for all due consideration.
autumn says
Hey Gina, email me a couple pictures that you’d like made into coloring pages. Send them to [email protected] and I will see what I can do. I hope you guys are able to have a lovely party with your niece – I’m sorry that coronavirus is making an already difficult situation even harder. Hugs.
Susan Cassimore says
This is fabulous! My grandkids would love to color the people in their family! Shoot, I think my husband would love to do this too. I know I would. Thanks for sharing & for the chance to win Photoshop.