How to Make a DIY Coloring Book From Free Printables

Loose printed pages get colored once and lost. The same pages bound into a book get returned to for weeks — something about a book invites finishing. It takes about ten minutes to make one.

It is also the cheapest gift in the world that still feels handmade, and the only craft project on this site that a five-year-old can help build.

Step 1: choose 8–16 pages

A theme helps: all dinosaurs, all Halloween, or a mix of one child's favorites. Sixteen pages is about the limit for a stapled book; beyond that the spine bulges and pages fall out.

Print single-sided unless you're using markers — bleed-through ruins the reverse page. If you do want double-sided pages for a slimmer book, print a test sheet with a marker scribble on it first and see what comes through.

Order matters more than people expect. Put an easy, satisfying page first so the book opens with a win, save the most detailed page for the middle, and finish with something quick. A book that opens on the hardest page tends not to get opened twice.

Step 2: pick a binding method

• Staples (2 minutes): stack, fold nothing, staple three times down the left edge, cover the staples with tape for small hands
• Saddle stitch (5 minutes): fold the stack in half and staple along the fold — this makes a proper book, but needs a long-arm stapler
• Ribbon or treasury tags (10 minutes): punch two or three holes, thread ribbon, tie a bow. Looks lovely, easy to add pages later

No long-arm stapler? There are two workarounds. Open a normal stapler flat, lay the folded stack on a rubber eraser or a thick magazine, press the staple through, then fold the legs down with a spoon. Or skip staples entirely and sew the fold with three stitches of embroidery thread — five minutes, and it looks far better than it sounds.

A third option costs almost nothing and lasts longest: fold the stack, then run a strip of washi or duct tape down the outside of the spine and press it around both faces. This is how cheap paperbacks are held together, and it survives a lot of small hands.

If you want something genuinely durable — a class set, or a gift — most print shops will comb-bind or spiral-bind a stack for very little. Spiral is worth the money for one reason: the book lies completely flat, which matters enormously to a child coloring near the spine.

Step 3: make a cover they'll care about

This is the step that matters. Print one extra page on cardstock, let the child color it, and write their name and “By [name], age [x]” on it. Ownership transforms how much attention the inside gets.

Add the date somewhere. Years later, this is the detail that makes it worth keeping.

If the cover will get handled a lot, cover it with clear sticky-back plastic rather than laminating — it is cheaper, you can do it at the table, and it does not make the book stiff. Leave the back cover blank and it becomes the page where they scribble their own drawing, which is usually the part they are proudest of.

Making a pocket-sized version

Print two pages per sheet, cut down the middle, and you have an A5 book that fits in a bag. The lines are still perfectly colorable at half size, and a small book feels precious in a way a full-size one does not. This is the version to make for restaurants, waiting rooms and long car journeys.

For the classic no-staple mini book: take one sheet, fold it in half three times, unfold, cut a slit along the centre of the middle fold, then push the ends together and fold it round. It makes an eight-page booklet from a single sheet with no tools at all. Worth learning once — children find it slightly magical.

Variations worth trying

• Travel book: small pages, printed two-per-sheet, slipped into a zip bag with a few pencils
• Countdown book: one page per day until a holiday
• Story book: leave every other page blank and let them write the story
• Class set: teachers can bind a term's worth of finished work as a keepsake
• Sibling book: alternate pages aimed at each child's age so they can color side by side
• Grandparent book: they color it, you post it — far better than a card

Mistakes worth avoiding

Too many pages is the big one. A sixteen-page book that gets finished beats a forty-page book that gets abandoned on page six, and children measure their own success by whether they reached the end. Start smaller than feels right.

The other is binding the left edge too close to the paper's edge. Leave at least a centimetre of margin so the staples or holes do not tear out, and check that no part of the artwork disappears into the spine.

And don't correct the coloring. The book belongs to whoever made the cover.

Mixing in something that isn't coloring

A book of twelve coloring pages is good. A book of eight coloring pages, two mazes, a dot-to-dot and a blank “draw your own” page is better, because it changes gear every few pages and a child who has gone off coloring can keep going. Activity books sold in shops do this for a reason.

For older children, leave three or four pages blank and rule them into comic panels. The finished book then contains something they invented, which is usually the page they show people first.

What to do with it afterwards

Finished books get shoved in a drawer unless they have somewhere to live. A shallow basket on the bookshelf works: it keeps them upright, visible and re-openable, which is the whole reason to bind pages in the first place.

Photograph the best spreads before the book falls apart, and write the date on the back cover. Two years later the photographs are worth more than the book, and they take up no space at all.