Have you got involved in the colouring in craze? Do you love all these beautiful colouring pages and books for adults around these days? So many gorgeous designs but what do you do with them after you've coloured them in?

I was given a colouring book/diary for Christmas last year, it seemed like a genius idea, a week to colour each page, but my felt pens all bleed through to the other side like mad and I quickly had to decide - diary or colouring book? It couldn't be both.

I bought another diary and carried on with the colouring, just now and again when I had a minute (mostly sitting at the kitchen table whilst the dinner is in the oven. My colouring is not especially neat so no looking too closely!)

I thought it would be nice to use them rather than just leaving them in the book so I've had fun finding things to do with colouring pages.

Ideas for your finished colouring pages

Make a Greeting Card

This is an easy one, use the whole design and just trim it to fit a card blank:

I just added some black outlines with a fine liner to part of this design and glued on some sequins, I like to use something like Anita’s Tacky Glue for this.

You can write a message somewhere in the design like this:

make a card with a finished colouring page

Or you can cut up the finished page and just use part of it:

This page is pretty but not spectacular so ideal to be cut up
Draw a number or letter in pencil and cut out with scissors or a craft knife
Edge the card blank with one of the colouring pens you used in the design by putting it on scrap paper and then whizzing along the edge with your coloured marker pen
Glue the number or letter onto the card blank, add a few punched shapes too if you like

Here I took a leaf colouring page from Lucylu Dreams and made 2 cards. One uses the coloured page as a background paper and for the other I cut some leaves out and added them to a die cut wreath shape.

Decorate a Gift Box

If your pages are big or the gift small I guess you could just use your coloured page as gift wrap.

Maybe you could make a gift bag with it?

This gift was a mug that came in its own sturdy plain box so it was easy to cut or punch out and glue on parts of a colouring page.

I even had enough to make a little gift tag, by cutting out a tag shape and gluing it onto card.

Make a Book Mark

Cut out a strip of your colouring, glue it to a strip of card. Punch a hole in the end and add a length of ribbon of embroidery thread.

Decorate a Notebook

Cut the coloured page to size and glue it on. Cover with clear sticky backed plastic/self adhesive film if you want to make it super durable or if you are really messy! (This bird design is the centre of an Easter egg page that you can download from GetColoringPages)

Make a Postcard

Cut a piece of coloured page to 6” x 4” (15.25cm x 10.25cm) and then glue it to a piece of card the same size. Write a message and address on the back and send it to someone you love. (This page is downloadable from my Positive Thoughts Printable pages)

Frame your colouring and turn it into art

Easy peasy, trim your colouring page to fit and pop it in a frame. This page is another of my Positive Thoughts Free Downloadable Colouring Pages. I’ve got this one by my work desk, I need to remind myself of this every day!