Coloring Page Christmas Ornaments

I make these with my girls because it enables me to goof around with my scanner and my laminator, but if you're a working girl I imagine that you could goof around just as well with your photocopier and the local copy shop.

1. Find some nice holiday-themed coloring pages. Coloring books are probably the way to go, but since we don't actually do coloring-within-the-lines coloring all that much, I get way more coloring pages than I can use each week in my free Dover samplers. You'll be shrinking these coloring pages, so choose some that are meant for younger children, with broad lines and easy to color big spaces.

2. You have a couple of options for shrinking your coloring pages to ornament-size. I scan my coloring pages, shrinking them in the process, then set them up on one page in a graphic design software program. You could also set up a bunch of full-size pages in a photocopier and shrink them to the correct document size.

Another option, for super-littles or when you want to make multiples (these are great to enclose in Christmas cards), is to have your child color the picture full-size, then color-copy and shrink or scan and shrink the finished document.

3. Print out a few copies of the ornament-sized coloring pages, and let the littles color them in. When Matt took the girls to a program on the Nutcracker at the public library the other weekend, they actually got sent home with some coloring pages meant to be used for ornaments, so my littles had a ball coloring in small nutcracker princes and sugarplum fairies and mouse kings on circular decorated backgrounds.

4. Cut out the coloring pages. I like to back mine with Christmas scrapbook paper, attached by a dab of glue stick (since I'm going to be laminating the whole shebang in a minute), but you could also make your ornament double-sided, or just forget about backing it and get the damn thing done, already.

5. Laminate the ornament, then cut a hole in the laminate for an ornament hanger.

6. The best part is the decoration:
At least it seems that way from the look on my littler little's face:

Manic housecleaning and a screening of Dinosaur Hunters are the sole items on the docket today, but tomorrow I have big plans for popsicle stick Christmas trees and potholders for my grandfather.