If you’ve been in library land lately, you’ve probably seen all of the great collaborative activities that many libraries are offering. Whether it is a community coloring poster, stick together mosaic, or rubik’s cube challenge, these activities are great ways we can offer opportunities for community building, unplugged socialization, and de-stressing. I am a big fan of the giant community coloring posters. And, more importantly, so are my students! Unfortunately, we don’t have a poster printer.  And we don’t have room in the budget to keep buying them. I decided to challenge myself to come up with a way of creating these things, without a poster printer.

So, without further ado, here is the explanation of how I create these giant coloring posters, for free.

But first, a gift for you! On my website you can download some of my Giant Coloring Poster Designs – Just click the link for End Cap Coloring Sheets.

1. Figure out how big you want it to be.
   1. Make sure the size you pick fits on one of your tables!
2. Create the design
   1. I do this on canva.com, but I’ve also done it in Microsoft Paint!
   2. Find adult coloring patterns online.
      1. I get them on google by filtering for “free to use, share, and modify.”
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   3. If you want to include wording, place a white shape over the design. Then you can add the words you want on the white part.
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3. Tape your paper to the wall or projector screen.
   1. I use the back side (white side) of Art Paper rolls. You know, the stuff you use to cover bulletin boards? I like that because its on a roll, and you can make it as long as you need.
4. Use your projector to project the image onto the paper.
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5. Get your sharpies and start tracing!
   1. Pro Tip: Give the sharpies to students and let them get tracing!
   2. Pro Tip: Put something behind the paper if you use sharpies, or you’ll have black marks on the wall or screen. I maaaay have learned this lesson the hard way. (I now have a big piece of laminated art paper on my wall to protect it)
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6. put the poster on a table for students with a bucket of markers
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7. When finished, laminate and hang!
   1. Here are some pictures that show how I’ve used these posters to add color and customization to my h.s. library.

Designing and creating the posters is definitely a time commitment, but as long as you have rolls of paper, and sharpies, it does not cost any money! I have my student assistants do the tracing and they get done pretty quickly! Last week I challenged one of them to design the next poster on canva herself, and she did a GREAT job. So its no longer really a time commitment for me at all. yay! Some other pros to creating these yourself include:

1. You can customize them to say anything. Favorite quotes, school name, branding & logos, etc.
2. You can make them any size you’d like.
3. You can create many smaller ones and use use them as giveaways (either before, or after they’ve been colored in).
   1. For example, I use them in my PD sessions as gifts to raffle off to teachers who attend my PD sessions!
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