Monday, June 13, 2011

Homemade Coloring Pages

Because it's my co-teacher's week to teach, I thought I'd spend this week showing general art projects that aren't necessarily connected to a theme. I bought a box of Crayola crayons that had a code inside to use on their website. It changes regular pictures into coloring pages! I took a picture of two kids at a time, making silly faces or just smiling. Then I went to the Crayola website, uploaded the photos, and printed out the coloring pages. All the parents, kids, and other teachers thought it was the coolest thing. If you haven't tried it, you must! The kids got a real kick out of coloring pictures of themselves! Some colored it so it looked just like them, others went a little crazy and added makeup or pink hair or green skin. It was great! That was last year. I tried it again this year and my code was no longer accepted. <sigh> I'm only allowed to use it once. (The nerve!) And I wasn't going to buy another box of crayons for another code. (This code only came on the 120-count box, not exactly cheap.) So I tried something else this year. I used Picnik to edit the pictures. This site is great. And most features are free. Even when the site is loading, it's super cute. "Growing grass..." "Buttering sandwiches..."Fluffing clouds..." "Stealing picnik basket..." It's so cute, you don't mind waiting! Anyway, once you upload your picture, just click on Create, and then Effects. Scroll down a bit and you'll see "Pencil Sketch." Click on that and it will turn your picture into, you guessed it, a pencil sketch. That's the next best thing to a coloring page. It worked great! The picture goes from this:
To this:
Picnik is actually what I use to blur out the kids' faces on my pictures. They also have a lot of fun features on their site. There's a neon feature that's wildly cool:
I think I might have to use Picnik more often to play around with pictures of the kids in my class. They'd love that!

5 comments:

Sarah Kortenkamp said...

We have done this and it is a big hit here as well!
Love your blog Bets! I am always looking for crafts to do at home.

Unknown said...

This is great! I've never done this before and I can't wait to try it. Your blog is my FAVORITE! I've just been browing through all your posts pinning things on Pinterest that I want to do with my kids. I love all your ideas!

Betsy said...

Thanks, Rachel! That means so much to me!

banana pancakes said...

Hi, I absolutely love this idea. I'm doing this theme right now. I worked on this for about an hour and had no luck printing the pics. It just kept printing the face about mid way and then stopped, every time I tried. Do you have any thoughts about what I might be doing wrong???
Thanks,
Michelle

Betsy said...

Sorry you are having trouble Michelle. Are you printing right from Picnik? I saved mine on my desktop and then printed them through my own program that came with my printer. That way I could print any size I wanted. Or are you using the Crayola website version? I've only used that once and had no trouble printing from it. Hope I could help in some way!