No More Coloring!

I love flannel board stories.  They bring back great memories of growing up.  We used to tell each other scripture flannel board stories on Sundays and for Family Home Evenings.  I think this is how I learned the scripture stories.  I thought that flannel board stories were pretty much extinct (at least the ones my parents had are no longer being sold).  

Anyway, I just found a couple of great website that offer downloads of all of the flannel board stories and some other activities from the Friend magazine.  Here are the links to the sites:

Pratt's Family Home Evening and Primary Sharing Time Idea Box

Idea Door

Another one of my goals this year is to start a Family Home Evening file.  So I am part of a Family Home Evening group and getting a lesson on Family Unity ready.  This is the set of pictures that goes along with the "Nephi Forgives" story that I am using to go with my lesson:  

I admit that I felt terribly lazy about coloring 9 sets of pictures for my flannel board story to trade with the other members of my group.  I can get fairly creative when motivated by laziness!  Perhaps I got my fill of coloring while teaching.  

Lightbulb Moment:  I realized that I could use Photoshop to "color" these pictures.  I simply used the Paint Bucket tool to fill the areas of the picture with a certain color.  Magnifying the pictures up to 500% helped me with the detailed areas.  I used the pencil tool also to touch up areas of the beards that didn't have clear definitive lines. 

Because I am so pleased with myself for figuring this out, I want to share!  You should be able to just click and drag on this picture to download this colored version.  But just in case, I have a document with the story (I tweaked it slightly to go with my "Family Unity" lesson theme) and the colored pictures that you can download here. (Or just grab it from my sidebar under "My Downloads.")  I hope someone else can find this useful!!  It beats hours spent coloring, right?!