Free Animal Coloring Books

Okay, so if you haven't figured it out by now, Bindlegrim is obsessed with the holidays, but, perhaps begrudgingly, even he has to admit there are a million interesting (non-holiday) worlds to discover here on earth's little corner of the universe.

So if you enjoyed the Christmas and Halloween coloring books you might also enjoy these eight page coloring books featuring animals from the forest, the farm, and even aquatic animals).

This is free content from office.microsoft.com that I had the joy, while on contract, to create from their clip-art library as downloadable content in the permanent template library. (The result of this blissful project was 5 coloring books taking advantage of one particularly great style of art: #1450).

And, speaking of great style, if you want some fun color-minded music to enjoy while you break out the crayons --- have you ever heard this wonderful mix of poetry and jazz from 1967 called Colors by Ken Nordine???

Did that get you in the mood to color? Below are thumbnail galleries of the three coloring books for your perusal - and be sure to visit the office.microsoft website for the full size downloads.

Aquatic Animals 
(Free Aquatic Animals Coloring Book from Microsoft Office) 

Forest Animals
(Free Forest Animals Coloring Book from Microsoft Office)

Farm Animals
(Free Farm Animals Coloring Book from Microsoft Office)
 

Of course Bindlegrim can't let a blog entry end without mentioning the holidays a couple of times, and if you are reading this entry around Halloween or Christmas, check out additional 8 page coloring books for those festive occasions:

---

As a side note - part of the beauty of templates and of Word 2007 is the ability to customize to suit your own tastes. If you didn't catch my original blog entry (on the Microsoft Office blog) that explained the above procedure (creating Word art from the Clip Art library) -- I have recreated the content in this blog entry here.

---

Free Summer Santa Stationery Set

While it's cold here in Colorado as December rolls around... (and I imagine Santa is busy making toys up at the North Pole) - we forget here that sometimes Santa just needs a holiday - or as noted to our team back when I was contracting at office.microsoft.com - yes, Christmas does happens during the summer in some parts of the world...!  And so, in an effort to show Santa in warmer climes, I went to work on a summer-inspired set of Christmas stationery. 

The Summer Santa Stationery Set offers images of Santa chilling at the beach with a cool drink, relaxing under the shade of the local palm tree, also visited by, you guessed it, a crab called Sandy Claws. The set for Word 2007 (or later versions) contains everything you need for festive entertaining, and offers the following - 1) Gift Certificate, 2) Stationery, 3) Party Menu, 4) Party Invitation, 5) Thank-you Cards, 6) Large Gift Tags (Placeholders), 7) Small Gift Tags (Address Labels) and 8) Letter Envelopes.


Download the entire set for free and customize in both color and content.  (Note - these were items created while working with the Microsoft Office extensive library of free clip-art... to create content for the free download template library). For this project the goal was to highlight Word 2007's ability to create themes that allows you change color palettes at the touch of a button. And was constructed from items available in their free MS Clip Art Library particularly: MS Clip Art - Style 1450.

If you are interest in using using clip art in this manner, you might study this earlier post that offers an instructional blog entry. And for more holiday-themed downloads (for both Halloween and Christmas) that are free from Microsoft, by designer Robert Aaron Wiley, please check out the Bindlegrim website for Free Stuff!