Background
Here’s a little story about how reusable coloring banners were born:
So, I really love to draw. I have been drawing my entire life. Sometimes, I even dream about drawing… Some would say, I art in my sleep. Five years ago, I became a mom. And guess what? I had a little boy, named Link, and he also loves to draw. I stopped messing around when he was born and decided I was going to be a professional artist. No more “art as a side gig.” There was absolutely no reason why I couldn’t do exactly what I wanted every. single. day. Throughout my years, I have heard time and time again: “Your art would look cute in a kids room” or “I like your work because it reminds me of being a kid!” I took this as a compliment because you know what? Kids are awesome. My kid is awesome. Your kid is awesome! I wanted to draw things that kids like and that they want to draw too.
Fast Forward a couple of years later. I painted this REALLY BIG mural. And on this mural was some of my doodles and drawings that I had been making for years. I thought to myself “boy, this would be fun to color… I want to be able to color this mural with my kid and lots of other kids at the same time. I took a risk, and printed out my original drawings of the mural on a giant piece of vinyl and guess what… born was my first Reusable Coloring Banner. I took it to an arts festival where I was promoting the mural, and handed a bunch of kids some washable markers, and guess what? They loved it! And I loved making them happy.
Discoveries
Durable and Easy to Clean:
Besides finding out that people (yeah, not just kids) loved coloring the banner, I also found that these things are DURABLE and super EASY to CLEAN. Let’s face it, as parents we are constantly cleaning up after our kids. If I am going to create something for kids to color, I want the clean up for mom, dad, and caregivers to be EASY. Baby wipes work great. Any brand, any kind. Got sticky kids with snotty noses? Bust out your favorite household cleaner and wipe it off with a towel. Been playing and coloring outside and it gets dirt all over it? Spray it with a water hose to rinse it off! Need to leave it out all day in the Texas heat and blazing sun? No problem it doesn’t fade! Want to use it as a picnic mat? Great.
Reduce, Reuse, Recolor:
How often do your kids “mess up” a coloring sheet and start over immediately on a new one? Yeah I don’t know either because I lost count. My favorite thing about these coloring banners is that if they “mess up” we can wipe it away in seconds. By coloring these, we reduce the amount of paper our kids are throwing away and you can reuse them over and over and over and over…. (and you get it.)
The Product
I streamlined four designs. Each banner comes with 8 washable markers rolled up in a handy dandy shipping tube. The best part of this shipping tube is that it doubles as storage for your banner and markers. This means if your kids have spent all day coloring a masterpiece and they want to run off and do something else, but also color on it later— like in an hour, or tomorrow, or the next day— all you have to do is roll it up, stick it in the tube with markers and get it back out when they are ready. You don’t have to wipe it off right away! They can keep coloring on it. They can layer colors on the dried markers. They can wipe off the stuff they didn’t like the time before. We have left them colored, rolled up, for weeks and each time we pull them out — we can still clean it off with out any problems.
