Hi I'm Hadas and I'm a Canva Certified Creative.
in this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to create a coloring book.
But hold on, if you think this is for kids only, you're in for a big surprise.
So stay tuned because I'm going to share with you a lot of golden tips and tricks
and a small surprise towards the end.
So are you ready? Let's go!
So let's start with the first demonstration.
And for this one,
I've chosen an A4 document because it suits my printer and easiest for me to print.
But of course, use any dimensions you'd like.
If you'd like to use a landscape mode, you can either pick flyer at the beginning
or if you have a Pro account, just go to the Resize option and search for "flyer".
Here, you will find that you have a flyer which is landscape and the exact dimensions of an A4.
So I'm going to stay with an A4 document and I'm going to name this, of course, "mandala".
This is the first example I'm going to show you and the easiest one.
So what I did is I created a folder which I named "Mandala". And I placed in this folder.
All the beautiful mandalas that I like
so you can do that or you can just go to the Elements tab and start working from there.
So I'm just going to search for "mandala" and I'm going to click on Graphics
and then you see that you have a whole range of beautiful mandalas.
Some are black and white, some are colored.
So we're going to use the black and white, which would be much easier to use.
I can pick just one and resize it, make it really big
and print it as it is and have with this one beautiful mandala.
Or I can make a combination of many mandalas on one page.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to pick mandalas that are easy to color.
As you can see, this one is not really easy to color unless it's really, really big.
So this is a nice one. And what I'm going to do in this mandala collage,
I'm going to place different mandalas in different locations
and I really like to cut them off so they just peek halfway through.
You don't necessarily have to use them in their hole so I'm
going to use these in different locations and different sizes.
Now, you can see that when you search for "mandala", you can also find
some beautiful objects like animals that have mandalas within them.
So this is a nice focal point for our coloring page. And I'll place it somewhere in the bottom
and make it really big so it stands out.
And now, what I'm gonna do is I have some blank white space.
I'm going to use this to add some text
and I'm going to make the text hollow so it'll be fun to color as well.
So I'm going to use this font combination and change the text to "My Mandala".
And there you have it. A really interesting mandala page to color.
Let me show you some more examples of mandala pages that I've created.
And what I'd like to show you is before you go out and print this,
you might want to go up to File and click on Show margins and show Print bleed.
What these are are actually your safe zones.
When I click Show margins, I get this inner dashed
frame. Let me just zoom in so you can see this a lot clearer.
You see this dashed frame, this is actually my safe zone.
It means that anything within this frame is sure to show when printing,
nothing will be cut off and anything that matters like text
and important information should be inside this frame.
When I click on Show print bleed, I get an outer dashed frame.
Let me zoom in again.
This means that any information outside this dashed frame might get cut off when printing.
So make sure you don't have anything that goes beyond this print bleed
if you really want to make sure that everything stays safe.
Now, when you send this out to print, you need to download this as PDF print
and don't forget to check mark the Crop marks and bleed.
This is important for your printer's house.
Here is another mandala that I created of pastries.
And one tip that I want to give you. Some of these sketches
were really black and some were kind of grayish.
So if you want to keep everything the same and have it all really black.
For example, this is a cupcake that's really black and the other cupcake is kind of grayish.
You can't bold this. You can't add to this more black.
But what you can do is just duplicate it and then once you duplicate it and position it
exactly on top of itself, then it gets that bold effect.
You see now it looks a lot more black.
So I'll have to duplicate this maybe two three four times depending on my image
and there you go now.
Let's go to the next example and create a coloring pattern.
So in this case, I used a landscape document
and I'm just going to search for "pattern" under Elements.
In this case, I can use one pattern which can be a perfect one-pager for a coloring book.
But I can also search for seamless patterns.
I can also filter this to just black or just white.
So I'm just going to filter this to white and then you see a lot of beautiful, beautiful patterns.
Some of them are seamless, which means that you can connect them
to each other to create one whole pattern, for example, this one.
But you'll notice that the pattern is black over white, which is not a lot of fun to color.
But we can reverse this.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to change the color of the black to white.
Don't worry that it disappeared, I'm just going to change my background to black and then magic.
Now, this is a lot more fun to color.
What I'm going to do right now is duplicate this and connect it to itself.
You can see that it completes the whole pattern and it looks like one whole pattern.
I'm going to zoom in to make the work of the adjustment really precise.
So I don't want to see the connection between the two
and then I'm just going to duplicate this and repeat.
Now, what I really like to do is add some text
and I'm going to use a banner or a label behind the text.
So I'm just going to go to Elements and search for "banner" or maybe a "vintage label".
I really like using one specific vintage label
that I want to share with you and that would be this one.
I'm gonna resize this, center this, and I'm going to add some text.
I'm gonna go to these
fun text combinations or maybe just add a heading and type in whatever I'd like.
This could be the cover of your coloring book or maybe if you're creating notebooks or
even a placemat, some fun at the table before dinner is served.
I'm just gonna type in "My Coloring Book". Go to Effects, make it hollow.
And there you go! How easy was that?
I want to show you also an option to create a coloring scene.
Now, you can print this on a regular paper and
color it or you can even print it as a canvas. And there it is.
Now, if you're wondering how I did that, I didn't actually print this on canvas,
but this is a smart mockup and you can do this to demonstrate your designs.
And all you have to do is take your design and download it as a PNG.
Once you do that, you upload it again to Canva. Go to Edit image,
click on Smart mockups, click on See all, and then you have all these sub categories.
So I'm just going to scroll down and search for the "frames and posters".
And here I have this canvas. Once I click on that, the magic happens.
Now, let me show you a fun trick which allows you to use any colored element that you like.
Some elements are open to editing, which means you can change their colors.
For example, if I will search for "flowers" under Elements and pick these flowers.
As you can see, I can change their colors.
Sometimes that would be easy enough to change everything that's colored to black or white.
But in this case, let me show you what you can do.
If I'll go up here to the white bar and change everything that's green to black,
and then change the color of the flower to white so it can be colored. Not so perfect.
So my trick for you would be pick these flowers again and duplicate them so I have them twice.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to create
these flowers all black and these will be all white.
So I'll just go up here to the color palette and let's change everything to white.
It seems that everything disappeared to make it more visual.
Let me just color the background. Just any random color.
And let's do the same with this bunch. Just create everything to black.
Now what we're going to do is actually place the white over the black.
So you can see, when I position it, it's actually on the back layer.
I'm just going to go to position and place it forward.
So now, what I'm going to do I'm not going to place it exactly on top of each other,
but now I can get rid of this yellow background.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the arrow keys so I can move
very slightly one pixel at a time and see what happens.
I get this outline, this black outline. Let me zoom in and show you what it looks like.
And boom! Now, I can color these fun flowers.
Here, I'll share with you another fun trick.
Let's take for example, this cat, which is editable.
I'm going to duplicate the cat as we did before.
And I'm going to change one of the cats everything to white,
but not exactly everything. In this case, the black outline serves me well.
So I'm going to leave the black as it is. And just going to change all the other colors to white.
Now, one thing that you'll notice, this could be a fun coloring page
having kids or adults complete this cat however they imagine it should look like.
So this is one fun idea.
But let's continue and go ahead to the second cat.
And this time, we're just gonna invert everything.
So whatever we change to white, we're going to change to black.
And I am going to change what was black to white. So we have this invert cat.
So now I'm going to place the black behind the white.
Again, I'm going to color the background just so I can be precise.
Let's place it behind just a little, not perfectly behind.
Let's get rid of the yellow and move the black cat position backward.
Now, let's use the arrow keys until we get the perfect outline of the cat.
Sometimes, you might need to resize a little bit
the top layer so you can have the full outline of the cat.
Now, let's go to the next example.
And in this case, I want to show you how you can use
photos to create beautiful coloring pages.
So let's go to the Photos tab and I'm going to search for "black and white".
That would be the easiest way to go.
For example, this is so simple. I just drag and drop this
set it as background and there you have it.
But let's say we want to use a different photo that is not just drag and drop. And that's it.
For example, this one I really love this photo. I'm going to set this as the background.
Double click this and adjust it so you can see the sneakers.
But you'll notice that the white is not really white. It's kind of a yellowish white.
So let's make a few adjustments.
Let me just move this around a little. Okay.
Now, what we're going to do, click on the photo and go to edit image,
then we're going to go down to Filter.
Scroll all the way down and you'll see that you have the Street option or the Greyscale.
We're going to pick the Street option because the Greyscale is a little bit too greyish
and the street is much more vibrant.
The black is black, the white is white.
I'm going to click on those three dots to make a few manual adjustments.
So let's click on that and let's swipe the scale all the way to the right
and make the intensity 100%.
You see how that makes everything a lot more crisp. Okay, let's do that.
And now, I'm going to go back to Edit image and make some manual adjustments.
So I'm going to go to adjust, click on See all
and then I'm going to play around a little bit with the brightness.
So I'm going to play a little bit also with a contrast which solves my problem completely.
Can you see the difference? It really works well with the shadows and the reflection.
You can see here I have some reflections and some like dirty things behind.
Once I play with the contrast, it all goes away. It cleans up my photo and it looks a lot better.
So this is really, really fun and easy and friendly to color.
Let's take another example with a different photo.
Now, how about taking a real, live colored photo and making it a coloring page.
Let me show you how to do that.
So I'm going to search under photos for an ice
cream photo and I've picked this one that I really like.
And I'm going to right-click and set images background.
Now, we're going to do a couple of steps.
And this has to be in the same order as I am demonstrating.
So I'm going to click on this photo
and I'll go to Edit image and search for an effect that is called Style transfer.
Now, if you don't have the Style Transfer yet because you haven't used it before,
just scroll all the way down and click on "connect" and there you have it.
No sign up or payments necessary.
So once I get the style transfer, I click on See all and I'm going to choose the Windel effect.
It takes about 2, 3, 4 seconds and then I get this artistic effect,
which turns my photo into a piece of art.
There it is.
Now, don't forget to click on Apply so we can move ahead to the next step.
Now, I'm going to scroll right back up and go to the filter option, click on See all.
Scroll all the way down and then you have two black and white filters.
You have the Greyscale and the Street. We're going to pick the Street.
Click on that and then you can click on these three dots
to perhaps change the intensity to 100 so it looks a lot more crisp.
And black and white, but up to you.
And then the last thing we're going to do is go back to Edit image
and then go to the adjust option.
Click on See all and here you'll have to play around just minor adjustments.
Perhaps with a brightness. It depends and it changes from photo to photo
how much you want to move around.
But you'll mainly want to use brightness, contrast.
Can you see the difference when I move the contrast to the right and to the left?
And then maybe play a little bit with the highlights and the shadows.
So I can't give you exact numbers because it changes from photo to photo.
But just play around with these four and you'll get a really fun photo that you can color.
You can do this with family photos and have the whole family
color the family photo. For example this one.
Now, my next and last example is not exactly a coloring book,
but something that might surprise you.
It's the cousin of the coloring books and that would be create your own tattoos.
Right ,you don't necessarily need to explore the web
and get some examples of other people's work.
You can create your own tattoo using Canva. Let me show you how.
So the easiest, obvious thing would be to go to Elements and search for a "tattoo".
So here, for example, I'm creating my own tattoo using several elements.
I can add text. I can change any element that I'd like
to black and white or make it a color tattoo. You name it.
You can also use this on DIY projects
and print this at home and use it on fabrics, on wood, on glass.
There are endless options.
And if you're a kind of a fan like me, you can just create a Canva tattoo and go for it.
See? Just like me.
That's it. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I'll see you all in the next one. Bye for now.