Hot Air Balloons Colouring

Hello and happy Friday!

I am currently enjoying the 30 day colouring challenge held by Kathy from The Daily Marker. This is the third time I have done it and, honestly, I was running out of new things to colour. I don’t have a fresh supply of new stamps to play with (or an endless supply of money with which to buy them either – stamp sets can be pricey!) and I don’t always have the time or inspiration to draw my own images. My daughter had a day off school this week as she was full of cold (I must also put in here that I too am full of cold but Mum’s don’t really get ill enough to have days off, do they?) and I was looking for a way to entertain her when I remembered that my friend Louise sells colouring pages in her Etsy shop so I thought today that I would share the love and show you Samfire Greeting Cards.

She has a few different colouring pages to buy (amongst other things) from pretty flowers to unicorns. I chose the hot air balloons as I didn’t think it would be too overwhelming for a snuffly 8 year old or myself. Once I bought the image I followed the instructions and the image was downloaded into my ‘Pictures’ on my laptop. From there I simply printed on to cards stock and coloured with Promarkers. The original image is A4. Here is the finished result of my colouring .

It’s great isn’t it? I wasn’t content to leave it at that and decided to play further so I scanned the coloured page and inserted it into a ‘Word’ document where I could alter the size – I made it so that I could fit 4 images on one page and printed. I really wanted to get a feeling of depth with it and to use some card making skills. I decided on my layers, set about cutting out and mounting onto 3D foam. I love a bit of sparkle so finished with Wink of Stella in clear. I now have a lovely set of pictures to decorate my craft desk.

An odd photo but I wanted to show the various layers in this card.

Apologies for the ropey photos; the sun is either too bright or non existent (I have tried this in several spots around the house today and I just can’t seem to get it right) but I wanted to show the difference in size.

I had so much fun doing this. You could colour them to suit a colour scheme in a room or print then off as many times you like and make works of art for children’s rooms (same picture but coloured to suit the child) or let each child do their own, if a large picture is too much then resize (such as I did in word) before printing out. I have made the smaller one into a card and I guess I could have made a gift tag to match if I was giving this away (which I won’t be!). Obviously the artwork belongs to Louise so the final pieces can’t be sold but this image cost me £1.80 as opposed to £15 or so for a stamp set. How often can you say you kept a child and yourself entertained for £1.80?

If colouring pages aren’t your thing but you know someone who would love a card with a pug on it or maybe a slightly naughty valentine’s card then Louise is the girl for you, a Christmas card with a  whale on it – no problem – or simply a flower felt brooch. You can see all her goodies here

My friend didn’t ask for a review and I bought the image without her knowing. Crafters are a lovely bunch and as far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier 🙂

Thanks for reading.

Hannah x