by Sunday Lamdin

What it is about colouring? It can be so satisfying, don't you think?

I've only recently "rediscovered" colouring because of my daughter and all her colouring books! You can get completely absorbed in colouring, it is restful for the mind... you should try it! How about some hand-coloured titles? Or even greetings messages on cards?

Here is an example of a hand-coloured title (or part of the page title).

I have achieved this look by typing the word "Rainbow" in a blank MS Word document, I then changed the font to a thick one (in this case it is Berlin Sans FB Demi) and increased the size to 100pt. I then printed this out and coloured it roughly (I wanted to give a sketched" feel to the title) with coloured pencils. It was then trimmed, I added a coloured border with multicoloured ink pads and mounted it on an undersized dark blue piece of card which was mounted using 3D foam.

Here is the finished page - it's an 8x8 by the way...

If you can use Word or a similar word processing program on your computer then this is how I achieved an outline alphabet.

In Word I highlighted the letters and went to Format and then Font and ticked the box which says "outline" and then clicked OK... simple!

If you really aren't into "that sort of thing" with your computer then I have created some letters and words that you can download for Free (see below). Just print out, colour in, trim up and put on your layouts.

As you can see yu can get creative with your colouring to suite any theme you may have. Use pencils, fibre tip pens, even just a black pen could enable you to doodle lots of lovely designs. If you have a child's page, for instance, you could even get the child concerned to colour the letters for you?

So why not try a little hand-colouring, not only can you exactly match your title with your layout but... as I said earlier, colouring is relaxing and restful for the mind and therefore generally good for your health in my opinion, so give it go.