Tutorial: Color Your Templates Before Printing

Do you want to create colored paper projects without having to print on colored paper or cardstock? In that case, here’s a neat trick for using the free Microsoft Paint program to digitally your templates before printing. This is useful in projects like our Make a Paper Christmas Tree project. If you don’t have green paper or cardstock available, simply color the tree green (or other color you like) and print onto white paper or cardstock.

If you are using a Windows PC, you probably have Microsoft Paint installed, if not, download it from the Microsoft store (it is free). If you are a Mac user, you won’t be able to use Paint, however if you leave a comment below, I’ll look for an alternative for you.

Instructions

Open Microsoft Paint, select ‘Open’ from the menu and browse for the file you want to color:

In this instance, I am going to color our white Christmas tree template. To do this, select ‘Brushes’ from the top menu bar, then click on the paint tin icon and select a color:

Just click anywhere in the shape you want to color, and you will see it gets filled with your selected color:

There are some other neat features you could use. For example, select ‘Sticker’ from the top menu:

You will see there are a range of stickers you can add. I’ve added a little star to the tree. Alternatively, I could have selected ‘2d shape’ and drawn a shape, such a circle to represent ornaments, on the tree:

When you are happy with how the template looks, save it before printing. Remember to select ‘save as’ so you don’t overwrite your original template:

Using Microsoft Paint in this way, you can color any white template from us here at Make Breaks (or any other templates you may have) before printing and save having to buy colored cardstock or paper 🙂