This is a fairly easy and straightforward project. It's just time consuming because you have to cut everything out twice. That gives you plenty of bad TV watching time, though, which is fun.
I cut all the photos out of magazines for the color books. When I set out to make these books, I wanted every picture to be of a real thing- no cartoons or cutesy illustrations. I wanted true to life photos. For the most part, if you have a good selection of magazines to choose from, this won't be a problem. It may take some extra hunting to find specific colors if you end up short on images for a page or if you choose "unusual" colors (metallics, gray). Our book has two page spreads of white, black, brown, yellow, red, blue, green, pink, purple and orange.
I have a mix of parenting, gardening, lifestyle and home magazines that I use for projects. Pulling from a variety of topics gives you a larger pool of images to pull from and ensures that you don't have a color book full of just food pictures or car pictures.
- magazines
- adhesive
- scrapbook with adjustable pages
- white and black cardstock
- colored cardstock to match the colors you'll be including in the book
- Decide how many pages and what colors you want to include in your book.
- Start cutting! Flip through the magazines and look for images that are on a solid background, stand alone images and images that are fairly easy to cut out. Look for a variety of colors so that you have a nice selection for your chosen colors.
- Use adhesive to put the cut out images on white cardstock and then cut them out again. When using white images, back them on black cardstock and cut them out.
- Arrange one color of images on the corresponding colored cardstock and glue them down when you're happy with the arrangement.
- Slide the pages into the scrapbook.
- If you want, you can create a cover for the book, too.
I chose a 4x6 or 5x7 scrapbook that had drop in pages. I used the white inserts that came with the scrapbook as my white backing cardstock for the images. I bought plain colored cardstock and cut it down to size to fit into the scrapbook.
I spaced the images out on the page. I wanted there to be a variety of sizes on each page, but I didn't want to overwhelm tiny eyes and make it hard for a child to focus on the colors.
Cutting each image out twice is a pain in the butt. However, it makes each image stand out on the page and gives the whole book a nice polished look.
I never did get around to creating a cover for Phee's color book. You could easily design and print something out on a large size label and just stick it to the front of the book. Or choose a book that has a photo insert cover.
Phee has thoroughly enjoyed this book. The variety of images gives us endless things to talk about. She loves picking out the different colors and seems to have a favorite picture on each page.
Though we haven't had this problem, one thing I love is that you can fix pages that get damaged. All you have to do is slide the page out, create a replacement and slide it in. You can also add colors if you get an expandable scrapbook (the kind with posts that you unscrew to add/remove pages).
If you're crafty and looking for a fun project to make for your kids, this is a good one. It's fun to make, customizable in a number of ways and it's something tangible to share with your children. Plus, it teaches colors! Get those scissors out and start cutting!
