Adult coloring books are all of the rage these days, but what do you do with all of those beautiful pages that you colored? Well, if your a crafter, you can cut them down-to-size and use them on your scrapbooking pages, on your handmade greeting cards, decoupage the designs onto glassware or you can laminate the smaller images and turn them into refrigerator magnets!
Over the next few months, I’ll be sharing with you several different craft projects that all utilize those beautiful coloring book pages that you made!
For this particular project, I used images from an adult coloring book that I colored with glitter gel pens. Check out my review on the Butterfly Gardens Adult Coloring Book if you love butterflies! When making refrigerator magnets, I use images that are 4″ or less in size…with 3″ being ideal. If you don’t have your own laminating machine at home, you can take your finished paper projects into some office supply stores and use their’s for a small fee. You can also check the public library or if you work in an office, see if you can use that one.
Not into refrigerator magnets? Don’t worry, you can still laminate them and poke a small hole through the top of each one to turn them into holiday ornaments! Remember Shrinky Dinks? These magnets look just like them!
Craft Project: Laminated Paper Refrigerator Magnets
Laminating Machine with Plastic Supplies
Colored Images from Adult Coloring Book
Scissors
Round Magnetic Discs
All-Purpose Craft Glue
Note: I love using the glitter gel pens from Yoobi when I color in my adult coloring books. I love how they glide across the paper and the shimmer glitter effect with their colors. You can use whatever you prefer.
You’ll want to select images that are 4″ in size or less. Color them in using your preferred artist tools. Using a small pair of scissors, cut around the perimeter of the image. I find that large scissors don’t work as well.
When I make these, I will make several at one time. I lay them onto my plastic laminating protector sheets and then place them on the feeder board. I heat up the laminating machine on the lowest heat setting. Once it’s reached temperature, I feed the feeder board through the machine. You’ll want to follow the directions for your particular machine. If you’re making these with kids, this part is best left for an adult to do.
Once they come out of the machine, I let my sheets cool down for 5 minutes. I then use small scissors and cut around the perimeter of each image. When doing this, you’ll want to leave some space around the image, so that you don’t break the plastic seal. I typically leave 1/16″ of an edge. (image above shows them cooling on the plastic sheets).
Use some all-purpose liquid crafter’s glue to adhere your round magnet disc onto the back of each laminated image. Let them dry overnight before using them.
That’s it! What a great way to preserve and use those smaller colored images from your adult coloring books! It’s a great way to add some “adult art” to the front of your refrigerator or use them to decorate the front of a file cabinet. They also make great gifts and can be inserted into greeting cards & mailed to a loved one.
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Fantastic idea! I am currently doing a coloring book in the evenings as I find them very relaxing. And I scrapbook! I never thought of turning my coloring pages into something else! Just LOVE the idea. Thanks so much.
This is such a clever idea. I can see that both adults and kids would love to try to do these. I need to buy a laminator at some point.
So pretty! And yet another reason for me to get a laminator. I’ve made magnets from my photographs, but I really love the idea of cutting the images into shapes–much more interesting than simple rectangles.
Anne, I use my laminator all of the time! I make refrigerator magnets, bookmarks, laminated gift tags, luggage tags, to laminate recipe cards (especially one’s that are handwritten by family members, past & present) and so forth. Once you have one, you’ll find all kinds of different reasons & ways to use it.
What a novel idea! I don’t have a laminating machine, but I people who take things to a store where they will do it, also I have bought sheets you can use. So cute!
This a cute idea! This would be a neat way to display kids coloring projects. i really like this project and am going to try and get my niece to coor a few things.
What a Clever Idea! They turn out so Pretty!! I love to color in my Adult coloring Book. I cant wait to make my pretty pictures into a ” Little Show Piece “.. How exciting This is for me!! Thankyou for Sharing your Adorable and Fun Idea!! I didn’t even know they had Sparkly Gel pens I want some of them too! 🙂 🙂
Cathy, I bought my glitter gel pens from Amazon. This one seller over there sells them 100 of them for $24.00 which is a great deal! My local craft supply store has those same glitter gel pens for $1.79 a piece!
These are cute. I like crafts but don’t have the room to store a lot of crafting items, this project is perfect.
What a great idea. Plus, you get really neat magnets in all sorts of designs that no one else has, lol.
Right now I’m working a set of coastal & beach designs from one of my coloring books and going to turn them into magnets for my refrigerator to go with my coastal decor. I then want to find some smaller holiday designs (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter and Patriotic designs) so I can change out my refrigerator magnets as holidays & season’s change. FUN!!!!
These are just gorgeous! I love how fancy they look and would love to have a lot of them on my refrigerator!
Very clever. This is something that would be fun to do with kids.
Cute idea! Something useful to do with all of that adult coloring that is going on these days.