Hi there. How are you?
August 2nd was National Coloring Book Day. (Yep, it's really a thing.) Adult coloring is very trendy at the moment...Book stores now have whole sections of adult coloring books. It's nostalgic, it's stress relieving, it's colorful. I love this trend!
I Made my Own Coloring Page
After spending much time drawing in my sketchbook over the past few weeks, I realized that the drawings I was making would lend themselves really well to coloring. So I took this one, and turned it into a coloring page.
The Process
I started by scanning this drawing and cleaning it up in Photoshop, and then imported it into Illustrator. (I'm sorry I don't have screen shots of my process to share. I was too excited about what I was doing to document!) After much You-Tubing and trial and error, I was able to turn my drawing into a vector, so that it would be crisp and clear at any size.
Click the photo to join my email list and download this coloring page!
A "Freemium" is born
I read a lot about business and marketing. One thing every marketer will tell you is that you need a mailing list. It is one of the most effective marketing tools around. I have had a mailing list for years now, and have been working to grow it. I used to offer a 10% shop discount to anyone who joined, but that didn't seem to overly effective. I started thinking about offering a "freemium", (think Free + Premium) that I could offer in exchange for an email address.
Artist Mandy Ford's coloring page
Learning from Others
I came across Mandy Ford's coloring page on Instagram just about a week ago. So cute! She was using it as a freemium for joining her mailing list. Brilliant! Like any good artist, I stole this idea and worked like a dog to get my coloring page ready for it's National Coloring Book Day release to my mailing list. (Thank you much for the inspiration Mandy! Totally enjoy your work.)
Jack's Coloring Page
Matt's Coloring Page
Family Coloring Party
The night before National Coloring Book Day, Matt, Jack and I sat down to make sample pages that I could include in my email to my mailing list. (Though I staged the photos with crayons, they actually used colored pencils to complete these pages.) It was fun to do an "offline" activity all together.
Share your Work
At the bottom of the coloring page, I added my web address and a hashtag. Social sharing is a great and free way to get the word out about you and your work.
When I sent the link out for the coloring page download to my mailing list, I invited them share their completed creations. Here are the pages completed by the Masterson familly, some of our dear friends! It's so nice to have creative, supportive friends. Thank you much for participating Lu, Efrem, Lorena and Brad!
Coloring page by Efrem, age 9
Coloring page by LuElla, age 8
Coloring Page by Brad
Coloring Page by Lorena
Now it's Your Turn
Would you like to color along with me? To get your free coloring page, please join my mailing list. A download link will be sent to you in a confirmation email. And if you do color my page, do snap a photo and email it to me or post to Instagram with the hashtag #drawwithJen. Sharing is caring friends!
