Hometown Coloring Book
Free coloring pages of West Michigan places, with sponsor-funded printed books in preparation for families.
The first paying sponsors have approved their artwork. Email and contact-form outreach is running, and a separate custom coloring-book service for organizations is live.
All updates ↓
What it is
Hometown Coloring Book makes coloring pages about places kids can recognize near home. In the Holland online collection, two squirrels sail a maple leaf past the De Zwaan windmill. Another page shows children chasing bubbles beside Centennial Park’s gazebo. Families can choose local pages and download a PDF for free. Free collections are also available for Zeeland and West Ottawa.
The planned printed books will use separate artwork and be paid for by local business sponsorships. An interior sponsor can get a custom coloring page featuring its business, review the artwork, and request revisions. Businesses can also help distribute free copies at their locations without buying a placement. Sponsorships fund the copies given out by those stockists too.
The artwork workflow starts with research on a real place or business and keeps revisions tied to the exact image I review. For print, I built district pricing and a cost model around actual printer quotes.
How it changed
I sold one sponsor page through cold outreach in spring 2026, then stopped before printing. At the time, I thought making it work meant selling door to door in every district, and I couldn’t see myself running that kind of field-sales operation.
I came back to it because I no longer think an in-person sales force is the only path. I’m running email and contact-form outreach for local businesses and preparing personalized postcards, and the live pages let people see the artwork before they decide whether to participate. The coloring pages and books are the part I want to build; sponsorship pays for getting them into local families’ hands.
For the printed books, a business can bring a logo, an idea, or just its name. AI helps make the custom artwork, and the business approves its page before printing. The free online collection is curated separately. I’ve also made a Holland song and animated coloring-page film, now on the site.
Where it stands
As of October 17, 2026, the first paying sponsors have used the artwork workflow to choose and approve their pages. The workflow supports customer references, requested revisions, and approval of the exact artwork version. Email and contact-form outreach is running for the first printed district editions, which are still in preparation. No printed edition has been distributed yet.
A separate custom coloring-book service for organizations is also live, with configurable quotes and online ordering.
