Coloring Book Basics

1. Skillshare ColoringIntro: Hey, everyone, welcome to coloring book Basics. A guide to help you plan illustrate layout and get your coloring pages out into the world. For this class, you will need some digital skills, but first, a pen, pencil, paper and scanner or the basics. If you plan to draw on a tablet that works, too. I'll be using my iPad pro for some of the lessons. If you want to go beyond coloring pages and go all the way through to laying on actual coloring book, you will also need photo editing and layout software. Some kind. I'll be using Adobe Photoshopped and Illustrator in the class in this class. I'll show you how I plan a dynamic coloring books, starting with rough pencil thumbnails that helped me to see the collection of images altogether. This helps me to create a robust Siri's with a variety of page types. For example, you may want to mix characters with little scenes, typography with all over patterns or even intricate decorative designs with more simplified drawings that will engage all different age levels. Once you're planning is done, you'll create crisp image files that will print cleanly, then place those clean image files into a layout file that you can save as a PdF for printing or uploading to the Web. You'll soon be a pro at making principal coloring pages or bookmarks for your website or empty shop colorable posters for your kid's rooms or even funds. Seek and find coloring table top prints like this one I made for a small business to use at her outdoor markets. If you're super ambitious, you'll be able to create your own coloring books printed locally, self published online or through a traditional publishing house. No matter what your n gold most fun will always be coloring your images alone or with your friends or kids. Hope you're excited to get started. 2. Meet The Teacher: Hi, everyone. I'm 70 Korpi. I am an artist in the Philadelphia area. I work here in my home studio, which is pretty convenient because I have three little boys always running around that I can easily keep an eye on. I dabble in all sorts of creative things I love to, so I love to paint abstract acrylics on canvas. I like to teach art lessons to kids. I license my art for products like greeting cards and home to core and wall art. And I published books in the art instructional space on topics from doodling to fashion design to painting with your kids. If you would like to learn more about me and my work or hire me for a special project, please visit me online at Stephanie Korpi dot com. 3. Planning the Pages: So the first thing we have to do with planning the pages of our coloring book is come up with a list of some inspiration. My example uses the list I made when I was doing my flower girlies coloring book. My list included things like Girl With Enormous Bouquet Puppy with flowers on his head cupcakes, girl making ah, heart symbol with her hands, a little girl in a two to and even a girl with a big, bold floral ballgown. You come up with ideas that will go with whatever theme you've chosen. Once you have a text list, the next thing I like to do is find some visual inspiration and I always go to Pinterest. You can use magazines, photographs you've taken, or any kind of inspiration for this. But Pinterest is easy for me here. I'm searching for little girl trends and I've come up with some braided hair that goes with my boho flower girl theme. I'm going to put that into a new board that I'm naming coloring book inspiration and when I created, I make it a private board because I don't think my followers air really gonna want to see this collection of images in my regular feed. Anyway, click OK and you can continue searching. I'll look within this this search for a little while before switching to a new search. These heart sunglasses look adorable. I would really suit the theme. When you're done, you'll have a page that looks something like this may be a bit fuller than mine. But for the sake of experimentation and demonstration, this is what I've got. Once you've got all your research besides you, you're ready to fill out one of these. This is one of my coloring book planning. Thumbnail lay out pages. I made this available for you in the download area. I love to lay out books all in a grid pattern like this with little tiny sketches. It really helps me to see the variety of images that I'm creating. It helps me to see them as a whole collection. See where I'm lacking. Maybe I need some more pages with details and some more pages that are a little more simple . It's a great exercise and it helps you to create a balanced book. The result of all that hard work is this finished compilation of what my coloring book looked like with all of my inch drawings in a grid pattern as well, and it looks pretty thorough and well balanced. Now, when you sit down to start sketching, you might find yourself lacking ideas for page design. So I've made a little chart here, and I'm gonna go through all of the individual suggestions I have for you on ideas for page design. The 1st 1 is tight. Playing with letters and making them colorable is really fun. Here's an example where a phrase take center stage and there's decorative elements all around, or you can take simple letters and make the letters themselves into the art. Here I've turned board love into a botanical design, and it's part of my flower girlies coloring book. Next idea is to do something edged edge in the top example, I'm showing an all over pattern. You can see that this kind of looks like fabric or wrapping paper, and it's an all over design and be very meditative to color, but also a lot of work for kids. I did this edge to edge design of a monster kind of leaping out of the page, and you can see how the cropping kind of helps this design as well. But in a simpler way, you could try a placement graphic. A placement graphic is one that kind of sits center on the page. It doesn't go edge to edge. It's kind of self contained here, you see, kind of like a little scene where I've got a teacup, a phrase, a little butterfly. There are a lot of elements that are all working together to create one kind of cohesive image, and there's weight space all around for kids coloring book. You could try something a little more simple, and here's just a flower OK, that's sitting in the center of the page, friend to color, but not too overwhelming. The next suggestion I have is to try something with symmetry. Repetition is very relaxing to color, and in this case I've done a mandala design, and it has radial symmetry, so there are elements that are repeated again and again in concentric circles around the center. At the bottom, I have a freeze, and it's flanked by bilaterally symmetrical wings, so the wing on the left is identical to doing on the right. That's also good for cheating because you could just copy one from the left on to the right , my last ideas for a collection. So if you have a coffee lover or you want to make a page for a coffee lover, you could do a page full of mugs or different coffee drinks like this. The collection sits well together with similar items, and on this example I did a bunch of different flower buds in different varieties. I hope those ideas for page design are helpful, and here is a list of some more just to get you going, try making a pattern or draw a storybook type. Seen that goes with your theme. How about an extreme close up or a seek and find doodle? Try a single letter or initial with decoration. Inside the letter. You could illustrate a word or popular freeze with acute border about a themed Mandela design. You could make it completely out of hearts or maybe out of bugs. Ah, you could try drawing a recipe and pictures draw the ingredients. An abstract Siris of shapes can make for um, a nice contemporary coloring page. You could try something with fashion figures or items of clothing and 1,000,000 more ideas that I'm sure you'll come up with hope. He's just get your creative juices flowing last night I have for you is designing for kids versus adults. This probably doesn't need to be explained, but when you resigning for adults, they can handle a lot of detail. Intricate tight spaces that require manual dexterity. Um, lots of little individual sections to color, edge to edge design. But for kids, you don't want to overwhelm them, so focus more on chunkier shapes, simpler details and fewer and larger areas to color. I try to keep areas to color about the size of a jelly bean on, and that seems to be the least overwhelming for kids, so they'll want to finish. Hopefully, you're totally inspired and ready to start your coloring book planning Thumbnail page pronounced several of these pages just in case some of your ideas don't make the final cut . My self published coloring books have an even number of pages. I like to have them single sided. It prevents marker bleed through, and it also makes the page is easier to frame because if you remove them from the book, you won't lose any images on the back. I would love to see you post your themes and your thumbnail sketch pages in the projects area and share with the rest of us. So good luck. 4. Illustrate! : okay. Hope everyone had fun making their thumbnails, because now it's time to tighten up those sketches and turn them into clean Leinart files for your book. The first thing to do is scan or taken iPhone or iPad photo of your thumbnails. Then get that image onto your desktop computer. Open a new Adobe illustrator file size 8.5 11 and go to file place and choose your image to import that thumbnail. It's okay if it's large when it drops onto your page. We want to zoom in any way, pull the image you want to work with over onto your page and then select the rectangle tool . Draw a box at eight and have 11 the full size of the page, and then choose the box and the thumbnail image behind it by choosing command shift that will let you choose both things. Then go up to object clipping mask make, and it'll chop out just the section you want to work with. Then you can go to file print and just make a black and white junky old prints to any printer that you have handy. I don't use my nice color printer. I just use my laser printer and make an image like this. Now, if you're gonna make your finished drawing the traditional way with pen and ink, I would highly suggest this type of paper. I got this for a coloring book project that I did last year, and it was really helpful. It's this kind of paper called animation paper, and it's somewhat opaque. It's not as creepy as tracing. Paper has a nice, smooth surface, but it's also semi transparent, so you don't need a light box. Here's where to find it. On blick dot com, it's 12 F Finch animation paper. The pens I like to use best are these pigna micron pens by Sikora or pit artist pens by favorite Castell. They have multiple nib sizes and the ink will not bleed. And they are just really good for doing this kind of really detailed work. Now for my digital illustrators, I'm going to use my iPad pro and procreate. Click the plus icon in the top right corner and make a new canvas. Change the increments two inches and go 8.5, 11 for size and about 600 dp I you could go higher But I'll explain about that later. You'll see why. Anyway, you'll get a new campus. You want to go up to the little wrench icon in the top left corner, and it'll allow you to with the arrow import of photo. And it will take you to your photo album. So hopefully you have your thumbnail image in there that you took. And just by pinching and squeezing that kind of apple technique for enlarging and minimizing, you can make the part of your thumbnail you want to work with large. And then we opened the layers. You can screen it back by touching a little in and then moving the oap, a city slider, capacity slider back to the left. And then if you hit the plus again, you'll add a new layer. Touch the word layer rename. I'm gonna call this pencil because what I'm gonna do on this layer is make a virtual pencil drawing a digital pencil drawings. So I black ink selected and in the brushes palette, I'm going to choose. Sometimes I do HB pencil and sometimes six b um, So click the paintbrush and then you can start drawing. This is a little too thin for me. So that slider up to the top will increase the tip sized. The lower slider, by the way, is the opacity of the pencil. So basically, I'm going to use this as though it was tracing paper and my thumbnail sketch, Um, the top layer being my new piece of paper and the kind of lowered a pacenti layer being the thumbnail. So really, the techniques the same as if you use the transparent paper that I'm just gonna go in and using my thumb meals A guide I'm going to make a more refined sketch, not finished artwork, but a more refined sketch. Something that I can use later to do my finished in quirk, More virtual ink work If you're using procreate. I ended up with something like this is my pencil drawing. So now I uncheck that box on my thumbnail layer and all I'm left with is the pencil area just made hit the plus and you can make a new layer I'm gonna call this One Inc and you can choose a different brush tool. I'm gonna lower the oap a city on my new pencil layer that I made in procreate, same way as I did before. But now I have a more finished drawing that I can in go on top of in my brush palette. I'm gonna pick thinking, and then I usually use the technical pen tool or the studio pen tool. I'll show you the difference. The technical pen is more of an even with from front to back, There's not really a lot of pressure sensitivity. It stays about the same weight. But if you use the studio pen tool, um, it's more pressure sensitive and you get tapered edges. So that's kind of just like personal preference. And you can use whichever one that you like using the pinching with the two fingers again. You can kind of zoom in, which is great because you can get a lot of good detail. Make sure that your edges air clean. It's a great way Teoh make finished artwork. And you know I can't zoom in this much when I use pencil and paper and you don't need to. Readers you can just zoom in and get a really clean result. You do have the option on the iPad pro of using Adobe Draw, which is another program where you can make the vectors straight away. But I don't like the feel overall of that. For my style of sketching, it's just personal preference. I have done an entire coloring book using Adobe Draw, but for me this feels much more natural. Using procreate. Um, it's more intuitive. I feel like my lying quality is more my own, and I really don't mind the extra step of act arising, just like I would with ink artwork. Procreate makes a raster image that's made out pixels. It doesn't make vector image first and foremost, so you will have to do an extra step and bring this into Adobe Illustrator later, just like you would have to do with an ink drawing on paper and vector rise it. As a little aside, I kinda wanna show you a little trick here and procreate. Sometimes your lines can get a little wobbly and knots of smooth. If you click your brush tool, get this extra menu and this streamline slider, and if you slide it over, then your curves will kind of smoothed themselves out, depending on how much you've moved the slider to the right and it can help your curves or lines that kind of our large on the page to have a nice, smooth quality instead of any wobble. There's just a little tip for you, and I think you have the gist of how this goes, doing your clean drawing over top of the background layer. So I've just spend the rest of this up, and here's my final results. So I have a clean raster image made and procreate, and you can go ahead and share or email or export the image anyway. You need to to get it onto your desktop computer. If you've done all your drawing traditionally, then you just need a clean scan super high D P I. And important that onto your desktop computer. You'll need it on your computer because our last step is to vector rise. If you are choosing to print from vector rised art than you need to import it into Adobe Illustrator, you're drawing and here is mine. You just twos file place and drop it onto a clean and have 11 and with the object selected , the drawing selected, you will go Teoh up in the top header bar. There is a little button that says Image trace. You can click that hit. Okay, it'll tell you there's too many details, but it doesn't take that long. Or you can also do that under object and you go all the way down to Image Trace, and it's great out right now because I already have it working. But if you click that little box up there on the left, it kind of gives you all of your options and advanced kind of controls. So for me, the way I draw and the DP II scan at in the amount of detail, I kind of messed with these sliders. Each time I move, um, the threshold up, I move, the corner edges up. You can see the numbers I'm choosing on each of these slider bars, but you might want to play around with it a little bit yourself. Zoom in, see if you're losing any detail. Zoom back out again. Um, when the computer vector rises your art, you may lose some detail, or you might get too much noise on the edges. You can choose to ignore white for me. I think it makes my lines a little bit too chunky and dark black like a little bit thicker , so I just leave it alone. Leave that box unchecked, but again, all personal preference. It will work out just fine when you're satisfied with where all the sliders are. Then you can go ahead and click expands that little button up in the, um, up in the bar at the top and you'll have your finished spect arised art. Now, when you zoom in a little bit, you might see places that need a little bit of fixing. I tend to do super thin lines that need a little touch up. Sometimes it's just the way I draw. So I go into the blob tool, that little paintbrush. That's great out right now. It basically draws a vector outlined chunk for you, and it immediately kind of merges with vector art that's already on the page so you don't have toe. Um, kind of emerged those areas manually, I guess. Um, so you can just kind of draw freely like that. That's one way to do it all. My clouds have these really thin lines, and they tend to get broken up a little when I vector rise everyone style of our it's gonna be a little bit different. It will be different, kind of, um, things that you'll notice. You need to fix some places where my lines don't kind of merge cleanly. You might just want to do your direct selection tool and delete some anchor points. That's pretty easy to, um, or you might just find a place with all of your sliders when you're doing your image trace where you get it. Just perfect. Which happens a lot of the time. Earlier, when I said I was doing my drawing and pro created 600 dp I I was doing that because I feel like it more closely resembles, um, an ink drawing on paper, the kind of slugs and little do dad to get when you do an image, trace an illustrator. If you did a 1200 dp, I image and procreate, you would hardly have any problems or things to fix Here. I'm using the pencil tool to kind of redraw the white space in this blade of grass, and then I just kind of filled it with white. That's another way to do a fix on then the last way is if you've got like a clogged up area of white. Um, you can grab an anchor point on this last play of grasses, so I'm gonna dio and just kind of drag it to the place where it needs to be. And, you know, you're basically just adjusting your, um your curves, moving your anchor points and just adjusting. That's why I was kind of mentioning before the working knowledge of Adobe Illustrator would really help in this class, especially if you're gonna back to rise. You absolutely have the option of printing your coloring pages or coloring books from raster images. Just your J peg your scan. But I would really recommend 1200 dp I at least for that, especially for create space on Amazon, because it's not very forgiving and you get kind of pick silly edges. Anyway, this is my finished drawing, and it's already for me to use in the next stage and drop into my layout files so that I could get a PdF already for printing. And here's a quick summary of what you want to remember when you're doing your finished art . If you're using pen and ink scan at 1200 DP, I grayscale especially if you plan to print from your J peg or raster file. If you plan to factories your drawings, whether used pen or you use digital methods, the higher the resolution of your drawing file. The less editing you ultimately have to do after you've act arise will just be more detail for the computer to work with. Finally creates peace does seem to favor clean vector artwork. Um, I know that Raster artwork has produced some icky like kind of Pixley edges for some other artists, friends of mine. So if you want to use create space to self publish, I would say to lean toward the vector artwork. And finally, I would love, love, love. If you guys share your pencil or ink artwork in the Projects page area, I can't wait to see what you dio. So please, please, please share. Have fun 5. Layout: everyone. Welcome to the layout section of the class. I'm going to show you how to prep your files for people to print. So thinking color Ah, the 1st 1 is gonna be the simplest. We're just gonna take our full 8.5 11 our letter sized image and get it ready in pdf form for people to print. I'm gonna draw box and I'm gonna make it 1/4 in smaller all the way around. Then the eat half 11. So that would make it eight inches by 10.5 inches. And I'm gonna just center it on the page. And then I'm going Teoh, go up to view guides and then meet guides. So basically, what that's going to do is give you a safe space in case people's at home. Printers crop off around the edges. You don't want that to happen. I usually give 1/4 inch all the way around, and that seems to work pretty well If you want to make the margin. Ah, little bit larger. You can anyway, on the center, my image. So it looks nice to my I. Sometimes you'll have an asymmetrical image. You just have Teoh, position it as you see fit. And then I happened tohave a logo. Since this image is part of a coloring book, so if I make it available is a coloring sheet. I use the flower girlies kind of logo that I created and then also my business logo. You want a brand your pages in a non obtrusive way, and you can do that, like in gray down at the bottom. Also, be sure that before you save your pdf, if you've used any bonds that maybe not everyone has on their computer, see how it just wrote weird font and picked, you know, and not to traditional fund. Make sure that you go to tight and then create paths because then, as you can see, if I go into outlined mood, you can see that the characters air outlines and it won't give your customers and error if they try to open the file and don't happen to have that unique funt that you've used. Okay, so we'll just get rid of that. Everything's in my safe space. I'm gonna click file, save as and then name it whatever you want to name it and choose. Pdf eyes Your file type. Um, a pdf file will open consistently across. I don't know. I think every platform, but definitely most platforms. And so it doesn't matter. Um, if someone doesn't have the same software, is you If you save it is a pdf. Most people have acrobat on their computer, and it will just open a file like this, making just hit print. Now, when you open up my computer set to open up the pdf in Acrobat as soon as I save it and I could see there that I missed a spot Remember when I fixed that blade of grass earlier? Um, the little fill in area. I hadn't grouped it with the rest of the image. And so when I did my little re sizing and adjusting, they didn't travel together. So I just went back into my file, fixed it, and now I'm just gonna say it again. Now I can see that it's fixed. It's corrected. It's great to have that preview so that you know what your customers going to see, and you can just double check your work. The next thing we're gonna do is set up the same image. Um but smaller and four up. Four up means just that. There's four of the same exact image on a sheet, so you can get four many coloring pages on 1 8.5 by 11 is what I did was a select all which is command A. Or you could just drag your selection tool around everything on the page. And then, if you do command G, that'll group everything together so that when you resize it, um, all the pieces will get larger or smaller in proportion. If you hold the shift key down, it will keep it from getting stretched. Um, and then I'm drawing a box with my rectangle tool. The box I have there. I want to make it 1/4 of the 8.5 11 so that measurement is four and 1/4 5.5, and then you'll have a box. It's exactly 1/4 of your page. Set it up into the corner. I think I have my, um, my tools where objects will snap to my art board, then group the box and the artwork. It's that you have one complete kind of item that can travel together because now What I'm gonna do is I'm going to copy it three more times and that we'll have four. Image is perfectly aligned on the page so that when I save this page as a PdF, I'll have a principle that can be put on the paper cutter. Or you can do it with an Exacto knife worth Heck, you can do with scissors. You'll get four of the same many coloring sheets. Now you know what this is good for is if you have an Etsy shop or any kind of shop, you can include these little mini coloring pages as like a little bonus with every order that you send out. I've done these for small businesses, where they included, especially if it's a kid's business and they included as a little extra perk when their customers order something. It's really sweet. Okay, so what if you have a boat load of images, you're not ready to do a bound book, but you'd like to do Ah, printable coloring book. Let me show you this next type of layout file will need 32 pages. We go file new and then we have 8.5 11 selected in the page size and in the art board area . I'm gonna tape in 32. I can't remember if this book has 32 or 31 pages. The flower girlies, but, um, for images. Ah, but you can always remove the page later and you'll get a file that looks something like this. It's nice and neat and tidy and everything's in a row. So I'm gonna take the image that we created for the one page print out and just copy it because it's already done for me, and I'm gonna get it centered on the page and then so that I can kind of save myself some work. I'm going to copy my logo at the bottom and the flower girlies, um, little logo as well, and group them with a box that's the same size is the page. So I drew a box of state in half 11 lined that up, and I'm just choosing the box and then those two bits at the bottom grouping them and then I'm gonna drive, copy and drag those to each of the other pages. And, um, you can have your illustrators set up where the box will snap to your art boards. Ah, so you don't have to fuss too much with lining them up. I'm gonna copy them over on this first row and then I'm going Teoh, make it even easier on myself by copying the entire row and just pasting again and again down to the bottom if you didn't know If you hold your ships key down as you're dragging, it'll keep things perfectly aligned either vertically or horizontally, depending on which way you're dragging. So things will stay lined up in columns or rows. I deleted those extra pages at the end. And now, with all of your pages set up and ready, you get to the fun part which is importing all of your drawings. Vector rising them right here in Illustrator and getting to see the pages kind of come to life is coloring pages, all meat and clean. I highly suggest getting all of your J peg drawing files together in a folder first so that you can kind of do this part all at once. It's really fun to see it all come together. So I got my little bouquet there. I did, um, steps that we talked about in, um, theorist rating section Ah, and vector rised my black and white line drawing. And here's my little tp little boho tp. I'm also going to do the live trace and expand on this one and then just kind of continue throughout all of your images until you have a file that looks, um, complete like this. And this is a pdf that's already to save and send to your clients if they're ordering a digital download coloring packet. This is probably also the file that you would save if you were sending to a local printer. So you just pick save as pick pdf again. I have mine set up to automatically preview the pdf file as soon as I save it. Um, it keeps me from forgetting to do that, because I always want a preview, my pdf file. Before I send it to print, I'm going to make sure that there's no mistakes in little string marks or anything like that. So this is what my coloring book looks like. Okay, So, like I said, this file is primarily to be used as a digital download or principle. However, if you are printing locally at a small print shop in your area. They may want a file like this to print your book, mostly because they might have their own preflight software. And so you just give them the images and they figure out how to lay out in the book. If you tell them that you want the back side of your page is blank, they can figure that out for you. If you want the pages printed double sided, they'll figure that out, too, so they may just want this very streamlined. Pdf with just the image is loaded into it. If you're gonna printed a local printer, though, you will need to make a cover, and that's from doing here. I'm making a new file. It's 11 17 which is double the size of a letter piece of paper because your cover will need to wrap from front to back. So I am viewing the rulers and dragging so that my zero cross hatches right there up in the corner, and then I want to drag the center line to 8.5 mark. You could be a little more precise than me. Um, this is going to divide the front cover from the back cover on your book for you. Um, we're laying out the cover this way because probably of your printing. Locally, they're gonna saddle stitch the book or staple it. Same difference. Ah. Which means that the outer cover is just folded or creased in the middle. It's not perfect. Sounds like with the spine. So I'm just gonna show you a very, very basic way to throw together a cover in illustrator for your coloring book when it is going to be saddle stitched. Like I said, we're stapled. So you make your 11 17 you drag your margin to the middle and then just kind of, you know, put your title in the front, put a little byline with your name. Maybe you'd wanna put some kind of branding or marketing on the back by adding your website . People who use the book, you want them to be able to find you on the Web and maybe order something else that's always good. And, you know, those are the very basics. Now, I will say that if you want to print artwork on your cover that goes straight off the edge , you're gonna need to know a little bit. Something about bleed. A lot of you're probably already familiar with printing. But if you're not, lead basically just means that if you, um, have, you know, edge to edge art. You need to make the art a tiny bit larger all the way around so that your printer can trim that off and not risk a little white edge if they miss trim your booklet. So here I just made my page an eighth inch larger all the way around. You're basically adding 1/4 to the within 1/4 to the height. When taking that pink edge, that's 11 17 and I'm gonna make it a guide because it's perfectly centered. Way illustrator will change page size. The pink is perfectly centered. And look there. I have a guide for where the trim line is gonna be. So now I'm just gonna go back in and replace that pink background. Um, that has the bleed included. Send it to the back, and now you have that slightly larger art file that the printer will need. So it's 11 and 1/4 by 17 and 1/4. Of course you can get fancy. You can add your artwork into the background of your coloring book. You can draw a picture. You can use something from the interior of your book. You guys air creative. I'm gonna leave that so you can make your cover look anyway, that you like. No, that old line that Marjorie put it, ate half 11 that divides front from back. That's gonna be your crease. I wouldn't get anything too close to that old, but that's the line that the printer is going to staple on as well. So if the printer says saddle stitch, they really just mean staple. They're gonna place a vertical staple right on that folded edge. And that's a little different from a perfect bound book that create space will make for you a perfect bound book. Think about like Elle Decor magazine or something like that, where there's, like, a squared off spine. Um, you know, it kind of has a little bit of thickness to it, Kind of like this little white chunk that I threw in their create space is gonna include a little bit of a spot spine like that. So when we lay out for create space, it's gonna look a little bit different, but for local printers, and maybe some of them can do perfect binding, But just be sure to talk with them about it. Okay, So, homestretch, guys, this is the last layout I'm gonna show you on. This is the way that my book is laid out for create space where I have single sided coloring pages. So as you can see, it's pretty basic. There is a blank page next to every page with the design, and that is so there's no market bleed through and people can remove the pages. And, um, you know, the thickness of the pages of the paper that create space uses, um, is not perfectly opaque, so I just prefer to have one sided coloring book pages whenever possible. Ah, it's my favorite. So if you think about your book layout, where I have flour girlies, which is kind of like my little title page in my book, the page next to it is the back side of that. So here's my girl with the ball skirt the back that's on the right hand side of the book. And then, if you turn the page, the left page in the back of that ball skirt. Girl, is this blank one. So all my art is on the right hand page of the book, and this is just the way you have to lay it out because with create space, um, it's it would default to printing double sided pages. And so I don't want to say you have to outsmart it was just the way you have to lay it out . So it knows not to print on the backs and the last image in the book as a blank back. And then because, um, you have to do increments of four. Think about a long 11 17 piece of paper that's folded in half. You get four sides front, back, front, back. Um, I like to put a closing page with, like, my contact information and my copyright information, and I don't want that to have Arnolin back either. So I switch it out the page that faces my back cover with my little like this, you know, copyright information that has a blank page on the other side here is kind of like a little general idea for what you can put for copyright inside your book. So then you would save this file to Pdf. And that would be the file. They end up loading to create space online. Okay, you guys are still with me. Thanks for hanging in. The last section is making the cover for our creates Facebook. So you need to log in and make an account for yourself and hit start a new project, and I usually will name the product project first, but you don't have to go through this step by step. Um, kind of walk through that they do for you quite yet. Um, just click guided and get started and then skip all this other mumbo jumbo and go over there in the left column to cover. And I always upload my own cover. So I click that. And then there's some tips on creating a cover for your pdf. Um, cover pdf for your book, and it includes a lot of math that tells you how to figure out how wide your spine is gonna be based on how many pages your book has and anyway, lots of math. It's not as complicated as it seems. If you just follow the steps, it's basically having you add a bleed, plus the size of your cover, plus the size of your spine. To get your final measurements, however, you can cheat. If you want you, you can put download, cover template. Click that and you'll get this handy little box. You pick black and white for your page type because those papers thinner the size of your book and then how many pages it's going to be. In my case, it's 64 pages and then you click build a template, and then you have this handy little download so you can click there. Download will go to the download area of your computer, and I'm just pulling the PdF, um, into photo shop, double checking that it's RGB color. It will default to the black are to gray scale and making shorts. 300 g p. I. And look, there you have it. All you have to do now is make your arch fit this template. I'm gonna drop my cover that I made for flower girlies. Into this templates, you can see how my artwork aligns with all of the markings. It's pretty basic, as you can see anything. That's an important piece of art stays within the boundaries. My little white kind of scallops spine area is slightly bigger than the spine they have marked because they do let you know that there's a little margin for error there left to right, Um, here, with the background removed, you can see it even a little better. And then here all the little descriptions of the markings I think that's supposed to save dotted line the dotted lines around the edges or trim these blue ones on the spine. Show you where the spine is gonna be. Um, with a little margin for error. So I would be generous in that area. And then the white area, basically the the large rectangle that is the back cover, Um, and then the large rectangle that represents the front cover that's the safe space. Have anything important within those orange markings, and then lastly, like on the backside, that little yellow rectangle, that's where your barcodes gonna be printed. So make sure that, like your logo or website isn't gonna be obscured by that barcode. When you're designing your back cover, you see here, you get a better look. So once everything looks good to you and you ready to save your file? The most important thing is to touch little eyeball on the template layer and make sure you turn it off before you save your final art file. Because otherwise it'll print actually create space will stop you probably in the proofing stage from printing it that way. But don't forget to turn it off. I'm including this 8.5 11 um, template for a 64 page book in the download area of the class. If you happen to be doing this type of book, you can just download load that one. Otherwise you'll need Teoh. Use the little template maker on create space and make your own for the number of pages you've created. Here is my finished create space layout again, and I hope you would share a screenshot of yours or a screenshot of your cover layout into the projects area of the class. Everyone, I'm sure, would love to see what each other is up, Teoh. So get to it 6. Print + Publish + Wrap Up: Welcome to the last video in our class the print and publish video. I'm going to share a couple of tips with you on just plain old principle coloring pages, things that you might be offering folks in your Etsy shop. Um, let people know that laser prints work best to avoid smudging of the black lines if you're using markers or at other wet media. Um, who, if they need to use an inkjet printer, um, just encourage them to use dry media like color pencils or crayons, and it will work out a lot better if you're offering principles in your Etsy shop like I do in mind. Here's my section of principles. I usually watermark the, um, kind of more crisp, clear, higher rez images there in my shops that people can't just print directly from the screen, and it's a shame you have to do that, but you dio eso. I just put my logo across it in like a light color that doesn't obscure the image too much . And then when you're making your FD listing, you just click digital instead of physical product. When you're setting up your listing and it will give you a place right there to attach your pdf principal file. You can see right here I have a principal version of my color Kiddo coloring book. And I have an image in the listing that shows all the pages as well so people can toggle through and see what they're gonna get. And then here is a listing for a surfer girl, just a single coloring sheet. And in the Burbage, you say things like, you know, making sure people know it's only for personal use and that they can't reproduce it for resale and all that jazz you can look at lots of principle listings, one, etc. To kind of figure out what you want your wording to say Now, when I first went in my flower girlies coloring book, I did it locally. I used a local printer and I sent my files to them, and I talked to them first about what kind of files that they would want for me. What they want a full layout file? Or did they just want the images in the order that I wanted them in the book? I kind of just let them know that I wanted blank backs to the pages, and it just took it from there with a file, just like you see there on the far right of the page. This file. I don't have any of the blank pages included. They just did it for me. I asked them to do a plane card stock cover. And then I printed labels from online labels dot com with my logo and assemble them by hand so they feel really unique. Or you can go all out with a full color cover and you might want to pull some art from inside your book, color it and let people know what the art might look like. Colored in. That just kind of encourages people to buy your book, so that covers printing yourself. Now let's talk about publishing. So I'm gonna walk you through the steps I took to use Amazon's Create Space platform to do a self published for two of my coloring books. You need to have your files ready. Your print ready. PDF with blank pages in between and your template ID create space. Ready cover. Okay, so in this part of the class, I am going to sort of remake my flower girlies coloring book. I've already done it on Create space. It's already published. And, um, I did a long time ago by order to walk you through the steps. I just wanted to use it as an example. So assuming that you've made your, um, account with create space and you come to remember dashboard like this, what you want to do is click add a new title. Either here, we're here and name your projects. So I'm not not actually going to go all the way through to publishing mind because it's already published. So I'm just gonna name it something like flower Girlies to It's going to be a paperback. And I'm gonna do the guided set up process with you right here instead of the expert one. I've actually never done the expert one. I imagine now that I've done a couple of books, maybe I could kind of get through it quicker, just choosing this one when we had to go through the guided because I imagine that's what most of you guys will want to do your first time out. So we'll just click get started, Okay, so it brings you to a page like this. What you want to look at is right here on the left are all the stages of your set up, and you don't have to do them in order. It makes sense to do them in order. But if you wanted to jump to the cover first, or whatever you could, the only thing you kind of can't skip passes when you get to the proving stage. So if you want to put a subtitle to your book Great. Um, I don't think I had a subtitle for mine. It probably just said a coloring book by Stephanie Korpi. Take that in. And then if you want to list out your name because, um create space will give you an eye ESPN number for your book. Um, I think maybe having your proper name in here is a pretty good idea. So there's no reason not Teoh put it in Miller Korpi. And if anyone helped you with the book, you put that in a Siri's. I don't have in addition number I don't have my language is English and then publication date. Okay, so I don't need to tell you this. You could just click right here on the What's this? Basically what it's telling you if you leave the field blank that whenever you approve your proof, it'll just make that your publication date. And I think that's the smartest way to go because you might not approve your proof, and then your dates are off or whatever. So just leave that blank and then click, save and continue now in this section, the i ESPN section. So, um, the ice bien is like your book number. Here it is international standard book number, and so every book has one. And if you publish with the traditional publisher, you'll have one. And it's a way to kind of look up your book, Believe it or not, you know, some books have the same title as each other. There's so many books in the world, but the I S P N number is unique. So, um, you can read through all of these options. Ah, if you're just going to publish with create space and have your book available on Amazon and you're not aspiring to try and find another publisher or anything like that, just click on this free option. If you want to, you can read a little bit about this custom universal i spn and have to pay $99 for it. But it gives you a little bit more ownership in the distribution and publishing options that you have. Um, and you can buy your own ice beyond number from provider online if you want. Anyway, the way I always did was just choose the Spree one and move on to the next. But again, this will be your personal preference, and you can do what you like. Um, so a sign I'll click assigned free I ESPN and will move forward. And now you can't ever change it. Okay, that's fine. Here it is. You can write that down if you want, but you don't need to, because it will always be there when you log into this page. Continue. So now you're gonna choose kind of the specifications of your book, even though all the examples I did were eaten half by 11 coloring book pages and I did my cover that way as well. You might want to have, like, a little handheld book. Maybe you want to do the sizes six by nine. Or maybe you want to Dio. I think they have some standard sizes, but, um, you know, you have more options. Besides 8.5 11. I went with 8.5 11. So you also had to pick what type of book. Because if you're doing a black and white interior, they like a coloring book like we're doing. It's a different kind of paper than if you print full color and the black or white Huber is a little thinner it and, um, that's why the spine on a black and white book, um, has its with kind of calculated differently at any rate, chooses it. You can click over here, choose a different size, and then you have all of these options and let's see, where's my 8.5? 11? Here it is. It's the last one, so I click 8.5 11. Here. They give you more options for more sizes, but you get the just and then because we have it already, we can upload our book file. Now, obviously, the point of this class is to show you how to do it on your own and make the upload file. Um, so it's already ready. However, you can get create space to help you with your design and you pay them for that service. This is starts 100 $99. But you guys are all artists. You can do this. So you're gonna upload your own book file. So we'll click here and you're going to browse through your desktop to find I made a special, um, file that had everything in it right here, so I wouldn't have to go searching for everything. So I have my coloring book print that I'm gonna upload you and me, scroll down. It talks about the bleed, the coloring book. I don't have any pages that lead. Um, if you did have a page in your book with artwork that lead right off the edge, I guess you'd have to look into these options. But keeping things simple, Um, I'm going to stay with non bleeding pages and it's already auto click, and you can run automated French checks and view formatting issues online. Basically, the create space platform is going to kind of build a preview for you, and it'll kind of red flag things that might not be okay on. And that's a good thing. So they recommend that you leave that check so we will then click safe. Now it's going to take a minute because you're uploading your multi page pdf Teoh their website. So just wait a minute. I'll speed this up for the sake of video. Okay, so that took I think about three minutes that I fast forwarded you through. And it's saying here the automated print check didn't find any issues. Will Jerez. So I guess we did it right, since they didn't find any issues. And I already know what all my pages look like. I'm going to skip the interior reviewer right there and I'm going to say yes, Skip, we'll have a chance to review the whole thing when it's done anyway. So now we're gonna get to the cover set up. OK, so we were very diligent. We already had our cover set up with the template. We have that ready. So you're just choosing between whether you want your cover to be matte or glossy. I picked glossy just because it doesn't fingerprint as much and for coloring books and kids and what not just seemed like a good choice and Then you can build your cover online. You can have them design it for you. Or you can do what we artists are going to do, which is uploaded. Print ready. Pdf covers will click there and scroll down. And then we're gonna find that file again. I saved it in the soul folder so I could find it easily. There's my create space cover made with the template and I'm gonna click Seve. And now it's gonna upload this one, and I'll spare you and fast board you through this. Okay, so now it's just confirming that we picked a glossy finish. My upload is complete, and, um, we will hit. Continue. So now the set of is complete, and what they want you to do is review all this information. I'll leave it suit or you all the information on your books. Um, like I said, I've done this one before, so I kind of already know my outcome. But you can never be too careful. You can go through any of these things if they're incorrect him, edit them, double check things and all that kind of step snail. What ends up happening is all the stuff that you've uploaded. You have to submit it for review to create space, and then they will. Here, let's click this submit files for review, and it will tell you that there's gonna be this 24 hour stage where your files are being checked and making sure everything's correct and all that couldn't step. And then they'll send you an email once the review is complete. Like I said, at any point in time, you can go and you can do a review as well of your book, um, and creates these actually before, um, you can list your book for sale using Amazon's tools, which will show you in a second they're gonna make you buy a physical sample just so that you can have it in your hands and approve it before you make it available to everyone else , which is no big deal. It's only a couple of dollars, but if you're really, really anxious to get it out into the world, you're like it feels like a 1,000,000 years. Do you wait for it? But anyway, on this page, what they're basically asking you is, how would you like create space and Amazon to distribute your eBook. So the standard distribution package, as it were, is free. And you can find the book on amazon dot com and Amazon Europe, and you just get that it's standard. If you want all these extra perks and things like that, you obviously have to pay for it, just like any other platform. I've only ever just done the free standard distribution because, you know, I'm not trying to write the great American novel. It's just a coloring book, so I always just choose this and click saving. Continue. Now you go through your pricing page and they're telling you that the the minimum list price is $3.59 and you need to decide what the up charge is gonna be for your book. So this this book has, like 31 images or something like that can't remember what I feel like. It's an $8 book or think I listed it for $8. You think I would know, But this was a couple of years back. I think that's what it was, so I wanted to make, like, $5 a book or something like that. So let's just say we make it $8 You can do whatever you like, Calculate. And then, yes, this is correct. I recognize my royalty. So basically, every time a book it's sold for $8 $2.65 gets put into my create space account because we're getting rich here, guys, Um although if you do a really good job of marketing, you can sell quite a few books. When I first launched the book, I was selling quite a few. And now I must admit, I haven't marketed it in quite some time, so I just get a few sold here and there. Anyway, you've got your price selected, and it kind of translates it for you down here to the other denominations. So just click, save and continue on this page. It's asking you to make the listing that's gonna appear on Amazon when someone clicks your listing and wants to buy your book. So in here you'd write a blurb. This is a coloring book full of youthful images of girls and flowers, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can write whatever you want to describe your book to people and make it sound appealing . So they want to buy it and then this category. It's kind of like, You know, how There's books that are arts and science, and there's books that aircrafts, and there's books that are fiction and nonfiction historical. So in this section you basically have to assign a category to your book, go with crafts. Nabi's for the first section might just stick with General for the second section because I don't feel like I feel like anything I would choose would be limiting. So I'm just gonna pick crafts and hobbies, General. OK, that just kind of helps people narrow down category when they're trying to find your book online on them. You're author. Biography is obvious. You click. Add I and, um, you want to type something about yourself with a maximum of 2500 characters, the language of your book, the country publication and obviously well, I don't know if everyone taking this class is in the US, but I am and keywords for your book. What would people type into Amazon if they're looking for a coloring book like you're so mine might be flower coloring book for a little girl coloring book? And if your book contains adult content, Um, or is a large print book. You have to click one of these boxes. I'm not sure if it'll let me continue. If I don't write anything, I'll just write. I am an artist. My actual bio is obviously longer than that. But for the sake of us just running through the motions, clicks even continue. So now all of my book clouds are being reviewed. If you want to publish your book on Kindle, which doesn't really makes sense for a coloring book that I know of yet, unless Kindle has some touch feature I don't know about where you concolor online. I mean on your screen. Um, you would you would need to upload this, but we're not publishing on Kindle. So I think at this point we're pretty much done so you can stop and you'll basically just wait for your email box to have a fun little treat for you from create space saying whether or not your book is approved. And like I said, you'll probably be prompted Teoh order a hard copy sent to your house and it takes like a day or two mine. Remember mine coming really quickly for both the books that I did on create space. And then once you received that, it'll prompt you to just, you know, say that it's okay toe post for sale and it'll be life. And then you'll be able to go on Amazon and see your listing pains that will look a little something like this, which is super fun. If you publish a bunch of books, he'll get a page like this. Your author page, which might just include Segway Segway, some books published by traditional publishing houses. I'm not gonna say too much about traditional publishing houses, because if you land one of those deals, I am sure you need no help from me at all. The only thing I'll say is people who might be curious is that typically, or at least in my experience, when you work with traditional publishing house, they really just require the art from you. So I'd be sending 1200 dp i black and white images that are nice and cleaned up as tiff files and having them all organized, they probably need to be saved in a certain way. Most places will give you the naming convention for your files, but then it's up to them to take the files and lay them all out, and then they will send you a PdF proof of how the book looks all put together. And I think that's a wrap. Thank you so much for joining me for my class. I hope that you learned a little bit of something a long way and maybe got some tips or inspiration to create your own coloring pages, coloring books and to get your drawings out there into the world for people to enjoy. I know I've been so lucky to be able to do this for my career and put books out there. I get to work with kids. I get to work with really fun businesses who let me make coloring pages for them and for their clients. Um, publishers I've met along the way have all been really encouraging and inspiring to me as well. If you or your kids would like Teoh, engage in any more little doodling or coloring page type classes, I do have Europe doodles and doodle days, little many workshops on my website Stephanie corky dot com, and encourage you to check that out. I know I wouldn't be able to do any of things that I dio without my awesome customers and students, so thank you so so much.