Burnt Out AF: 8 Sweary Coloring Pages for When You’re Over It

You know the days that aren’t terrible… Like nothing has actually gone wrong. Nobody’s died, the house is still standing, everyone’s fed. but you’ve just been asked for things since roughly 6am and you’ve reached the point where one more small request — one more “muuuuuuummmm“, one more email reminder to pay that invoice — might make you say something you’d have to apologise for later…

Yep, that’s the day these colouring pages are for.

Not the genuinely awful days. Those need a different kind of help (maybe therapy, even?) These are for the ordinary, grinding, over-it days where you’re not sad and you’re not in crisis, you’re just done, and what you need is twenty minutes where nobody needs anything from you. Twenty. Minutes.

Mindful AF

I’ve come to think swearing and colouring in are a good pair. There’s actual research suggesting a good swear helps with pain and frustration — it’s a pressure valve, and personally, I think it works.

But swearing out loud in a house full of people has consequences (like phone calls from school about your sons colourful language), and swearing in your head doesn’t hit right. Colouring in a page that says shit happens in pretty letters lets you say the thing without *actually* saying the thing. You get the release without the fallout, and by the time you’ve filled in all the letters you’ve usually stopped wanting to say it anyway.

The colouring in matters as much as the swearing, honestly. It’s one of the last things left that you can’t do while also checking your phone. You need both hands. It’s slow and it’s methodical, repetitive and even a little bit boring (in the best way). Colouring asks nothing of you, except that you stay in the lines, and even that’s optional.

Twenty minutes of colouring does more for an over-it mood than an hour of scrolling ever has for me — scrolling just hands you other people’s bad days on top of your own.

So here are eight pages. They’re free, they print on regular A4 or letter paper, and you can grab them one at a time or all together at the bottom. There’s no email signup and no faffing about.

WARNING: NSFW Colourful Language

Fair warning that some of these are properly sweary. Don’t leave them on the kitchen table if you’ve got kids who read, and maybe don’t colour them in at work. Or do. I’m not your boss.

Click on each image to download or print PDF colouring page.

1. Burnt Out AF

A toaster, launching some extra crispy toast into the air – or not, you decide what colour you use! It’s the most on-the-nose one in the set and I make no apology for that — some days you want subtlety and some days you want a burnt piece of toast that understands you. There’s a lot of opportunity for chrome and reflection on the toaster body, so it’s better than it looks for anyone who likes something fiddly to work on.

3. Little Ray of Pitch Black 

A grim reaper with a scythe, throwing a peace sign. This is tone of my faves in the set and the one most likely to get gifted to a friend who is exactly this person and knows it. The skeleton design means plenty of line detail — bones, a hooded robe, all the folds — so it’s the one that’ll take you the longest in the best, moodiest kind of way.

4. Namaste… Away From Me

The full mandala treatment. Proper symmetrical detail, the kind you can lose half an hour in without noticing. The irony of the most meditative page in the set telling everyone to clear off is entirely deliberate. If you’re someone who colours to switch your brain off rather than for the joke, start here.

5. Shit Happens

Seventies hippie lettering with groovy elements worked around it — think bus-stop mural, think a van you’d have been slightly nervous getting into. It’s the old classic and there’s nothing clever about the sentiment, which is exactly why it works. Some days you don’t want a joke, you want the flat statement of fact in aesthetic bubble writing.

6. Your Mom Called…

Because jokes about your mum never get old, amiright? A retro telephone handset held by a manicured hand, surrounded by hearts. The sweetest-looking page in the set with by far the rudest words on it, which is the entire point. Definitely the most giftable — this is a birthday card for a sibling or a friend you’ve known twenty years. Probs not one for Nans bday – unless she’s a cool nan.

7. It’s Not Me, It’s You.

Bold letters over a hexagon pattern, perhaps the most angular, simple page here. There’s no illustration to get right, just clean geometry, which makes it the fastest of the eight and the best one for a low-energy evening. Colour the hexagons in properly and it turns into something you’d actually frame.

8. Do Your Best and Fuck The Rest.

Another favourite of mine featuring banner lettering with delicate little flowers scattered all through it, and the prettiest page in the set by a mile. It’s also the closest thing to actual advice here — on a day where you’ve been holding yourself to a standard nobody asked for, it’s a decent thing to look at for twenty minutes. The flowers are small and fine, so this is the one to save for when you’ve got good light and a sharp pencil. If you’re feeling extra crafty, I actually think this one would turn into a sweet sticker.

How to actually take the twenty minutes

The pages are the easy part. Finding the time is the bit nobody talks about, so here’s what actually works for me.

Print them now, not later. The version of you having the terrible day is not going to find the printer, load the paper and download a file. Print all eight while you’re feeling fine and maybe on the work printer <winky winky> then stick them in a drawer. Future you will be grateful.

Keep the pencils with the pages. Same reasoning. If the pencils are in a tin in the shed, it won’t happen. A set of nice pencils in the same drawer removes the last excuse.

Set a timer for twenty minutes and leave your phone in another room. Not on silent, not face down. In. Another. Room. The whole point is being somewhere your phone isn’t, and twenty minutes is short enough that nothing will fall apart while you’re gone.

Don’t try to finish one. This is the one that took me longest to learn. A half-coloured page is not a failure, it’s a page you get to come back to. Treating it as a task with a completion state turns it into another thing you owe somebody. And ain’t nobody got time for that.

Do it in the afternoon slump if you can. That 3pm hour where you’re useless anyway is far better spent on this than on pretending to work while looking at your phone. Plus some of the more PC ones could make a nice activity with kids.

Download ALL PAGES

Grab them individually by clicking each image above, or take all eight in one file here. Print at A4 or US letter — both work, the designs have room either way. Regular printer paper is fine for pencils; if you’re using markers that bleed, thicker cardstock is worth it.

If foul language isn’t the mood today, I’ve got gentler mindfulness pages that do a similar job without the language, and some positive affirmation pages if you want to be kinder to yourself than this lot allow. And if you just want a laugh without picking up a pencil, the funny daily affirmations are the ones people send to their friends.