Craft Kits

Colorizing CHRISTMAS with Ready-to-Color Christmas Greeting Cards

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Colorable Christmas Cards in the Color the Carols BIG COMBO Christmas Gift SetCHRISTMAS IS BUSY

Christmas is coming. Oh, don’t we know it! One look at the calendar got me thinking about our family’s Christmas card list – not an email list, mind you, but an old fashioned list of names and addresses. This paper list brings together people we like to bless with a genuine paper Christmas card. That, in case you don’t know, is the kind of card that required a tree to sacrifice its life, so it’s a special thing.

It is astounding how quickly people ditched this tradition of sending paper cards in lieu of a generic email one-liner sent at the last possible moment. Yes, postage isn’t free (but you could trade one cup of Starbucks coffee this year for quite a few stamps). Yes, some places have unreliable postal services (and perhaps some of your greeting cards may not be delivered, but what is life without a wee bit of risk). No, you don’t have less time in the day than anyone else. Everyone everywhere is BUSY. (If you are not busy most of the time, take a moment to share your secret for extra hours in the day in the comment section below – I know we all need to find more time in the day.) Here is my challenge for you this Christmas: how about embracing a new thought this festive season?

Consider this idea: This year I will spare a few minutes to send a physical greeting card to someone I care about. Is that a crazy idea?

READY-TO-COLOR CHRISTMAS GREETING CARDS

For those creative folk who have a few extra minutes to invest in others, as well as in their own sense of well-being,  ready-to-color greeting cards are ideal. Buying a few packs of ready-to-color cards should definitely go on your “Christmas preparation list”. (Santa could use an efficient “list” person like you on his staff!)

Ready-to-color Christmas cards are a lot like traditional greeting cards. The big difference is that the color in the feature illustration is applied by you, and not by a printing press. You can use paint, markers, or pencils to add color to printed coloring cards. With digital coloring cards, you will use software to fill spaces in the digital card with color, and then you can print your finished work.

NEW CHRISTMAS DESIGNS

Recently, I was busy working on a new range of coloring card designs when a customer approached me to ask for Christmas versions of the cards. I had not initially planned to release any coloring Christmas cards this year, but the customer’s request got me thinking about how Christmas coloring cards could be more than just greeting cards. I imagined how a Christmas card coloring activity could provide hours of fun for families, friends, church groups and more. So I put aside my planned designs for a while, and improvised some Christmas designs for cards. Zisubu Artique now stocks sets of coloring Christmas cards.

PRINT AND COLOR GREETING CARDS

For those who like to do all their crafting from scratch, there are the “print and color” Christmas cards. You simply print the PDF card pages on cardstock – each page has two cards – and you are on your way to making hundreds of Christmas greeting cards (or just a few, if your Christmas list isn’t too long).

Not everyone likes to wrestle with their home printer – I know mine is rather temperamental about processing card stock. (Some days is plays nicely, and others it makes a big mess of the card projects I try to print.) If you don’t want to waste time loading cardstock one page at a time, printing, cutting the cards, going shopping for envelopes, and then FINALLY sitting down to relax with a coloring activity, the “ready to color” Christmas cards are perfect for you. The price of the “ready to color” cards includes all the craft work, so all that is left for you is to open your box of crayons and start coloring.

START A NEW TREND

Start a new trend in your family or business this year. Send Christmas cards that are colored by your family, your friends, or your business’ staff members. Or send an uncolored coloring card with a little note that encourages the recipient to sit back, relax, and enjoy coloring as they count down to Christmas Day.

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Art Therapy Adult Coloring Kit

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Healing Patterns Adult Coloring Art Therapy Kit for Christians“Healing Patterns: A Coloring Book for Adults” has become the focal point for a new art therapy kit. The scripture-centered coloring book, which has been available since May 2015, has now been released as part of a ready-to-give gift set. These gift sets are currently sold in ETSY’s Zisubu Artique craft store. 

While using a book like “Healing Patterns: A Coloring Book for Adults” is relaxing and therapeutic no matter what your state of health, adult coloring books are especially beneficial for those facing illness or battling through a difficult recovery period. Often people are unsure of what gifts would be appropriate for someone who is ill, facing surgery, in a rehabilitation facility, or confined to a sick bed. An adult coloring book is a great way to combine entertainment with health benefits. It doesn’t require a great deal of concentration to color an illustration, so even those too medicated to enjoy much reading may still be able to engage in coloring. And an illustration can be colored in tiny increments, so a patient can do as much or as little coloring as they have energy for. An earlier blog post entitled “The Effect of Art of Healing” details some of the physical health benefits of an activity like coloring.

The HEALING PATTERNS art therapy kit was created to take the work out of getting started with therapeutic coloring. The kit brings together everything you (or the person you gift it to) will need to start coloring. Inside each gift set (packaged in a clear, re-sealable plastic bag) you will find:

  • One SIGNED copy of “Healing Patterns: A Coloring Book for Adults” – I have made signed copies (with a short hand-written message) available for these art therapy kits so the kits offer something different from what is available directly from the book stores (e.g. Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Lulu, Ingram, The Book Depository) in USA and Europe.
  • One ready-to-color greeting card and envelope – the front of the greeting card displays a design that brings together elements of one of the illustrations in the book and a scripture (Mark 10:27). The card can be colored and framed as an artwork, or used a greeting card (with or without coloring it). The card is blank inside to encourage the user to express their own thoughts, write poetry, or simply jot a note for someone else. Part of the joy of being creative lies in sharing your creative efforts with others. This greeting card is a simple opportunity for the user to benefit from a coloring exercise, while also making something useful to share with someone else.
  • One Healing Patterns postcard (4″ x 6″) – the colorful card is printed with a variation of the image from the back of the coloring book. The reverse side of the postcard has space for a message, an address, and a stamp. The postcard can be mailed using a standard postal stamp.
  • A set of pre-sharpened colored pencils (12 pencils)
  • A pencil sharpener (because pencils won’t stay sharp on their own) – anticipating that this kit may be given as a gift to people who are not necessarily in their own home where they have access to everything they need, we included a small pencil sharpener in the kit. That way, there is no need to give up your coloring time just because a pencil tip broke or wore down.

If you don’t want to try coloring for yourself and you don’t know anyone you could gift an art therapy kit to, consider donating one or two kits to your local clinic/hospital or assisted living facility. Many churches also have hospital visitation programs – drop some art therapy kits at your local church and ask them to distribute the kits to people during their hospital or home care visits. Zisubu Artique ships these art therapy kits worldwide.

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