Category Archives: Adult Color Books

This is a very beautiful adult coloring book with many pages of hand-drawn Holiday designs. Rather than using glitzy style elements, the artist has brought in a focus on Nature into the designs. Many of the designs include a branch, holly berries, birds, deer, or other natural themes.

The book itself is lovely, too. It has a dust jacket which can be colored, inside and out. The outside has a beautiful touch of silver foil. The designs are so many and have a wide variety of subjects, including: birds, wreaths, ornaments, snowflakes, trees (Christmas and outside birch), candles, garlands, deer, holly, and even a kissing ball among many more designs.

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This is a pretty coloring book with filled with designs of items that can be associated with vacations. A number of the designs are riffs on a similar theme, such as shells, sunglasses, etc. The designs range from open and easy to color to more elaborate with some intricate details.

The book itself is really pretty, too. It has a dust jacket which can be colored, inside and out. The outside has a beautiful touch of copper foil. In addition to the designs I mentioned above, there are flowers, birds, shell creatures, sailing boats, lizards, trees, leaves, frogs, canoes, paddles and much more.

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This is a pretty and interesting coloring book. It has many designs which are associated with a home. I was a little surprised as from the name, I thought there would be some views of rooms within a house but it is really items found there plus some garden designs. The designs range from open and easy to color to more elaborate with some intricate details.

The book itself is really pretty, too. It has a dust jacket which can be colored, inside and out. The outside has a beautiful touch of gold foil. The designs include items such as: flowers, the front door light, cherry pie, flatware, beautiful glassware, frames, frames, candles, goldfish, outside window box of flowers, hummingbirds, and much more.

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With the exception of the included safety eyes and crochet hook, I am impressed by the quality of this kit. The kit includes enough yarn to finish one each of two Disney Princesses Cinderella and Ariel. After that, you will need to purchase additional yarn, fiberfill, safety eyes, and other assorted items to finish more of the characters. The kit does call for worsted weight acrylic yarn but does not tell what type of yarn was used. While it does not state it exactly, I would hazard a guess that that is what is included.

The book includes instructions for 12 Disney Princess characters. They are: Cinderella, Fairy Godmother, Snow White, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel and Merida.

There are nine colors of yarn included in the kit. They are: (larger skeins) red, yellow, medium blue, off-white, (smaller bundles) light green, bright green, light blue, lavender, and black. Also included is a tapestry needle for seaming the figures and adding features with the included red cotton embroidery floss, an inexpensive crochet hook in size 3.50 (US E/4), four 12 mm plastic safety eyes and fiberfill. There are also fairly detailed instructions including many diagrams from the basics to more advanced concepts including embroidery stitches. Unfortunately, there are no directions included for how to place the safety eyes. I am sure that this information can be found on the internet with a simple search. The directions do tell you exactly where to place the eyes. I must admit that I won’t be using these eyes but will instead find ones that I can purchase so all of my figures will be consistent. Either that or I will embroider eyes on using basic satin stitches.

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The Magical City is the first coloring book I have picked up by Lizzie Mary Cullen. It is imaginative and wonderfully artistic. She has a style that swirls and gives a new life into buildings and landscapes. There are many cities included in this book. There is also a hidden objects search and find as many artistic coloring books are now including. The key is in the back of the book, along with what amounts to a proof sheet of the pictures in the book with the names of the cities/landmarks/buildings. I’ll include a long listing at the bottom of this review if you would like to look through what is included.

There are 70 designs in this book, 12 of which span across two pages. The book is printed on a good medium weight white paper. The cover does not come off but the inside of front and back can be colored though the paper is extremely glossy. The outside of the cover is beautifully illustrated and colored with a touch of silver foil on it. There are parts left that you can color and the outside is slick but not glossy.

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This hand-drawn Christmas designs coloring book may be the best designs of the genre that I have ever purchased. The artist is Mary Tanana and, in the first few pages, she explains her methodology for drawing these lovely designs. While I wish that the book had been printed on a single side, I am still extremely pleased with it. The designs cover so many facets of the Christmas holiday, including: trees, stockings, ornaments, gift cards, wreathes, reindeer, snowflakes, and much, much more.

The book is printed on a good heavyweight white paper. All of my markers bleed-through on this paper; however, none of my gel pens do. As the book is printed doubled sided on non-perforated paper, I will probably be using my gel pens and colored pencils or will purchase a second book if I feel compelled to use my markers. The binding is glued rather than sewn, so patience or an exacto knife is needed to remove pages from the book.

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Attached to this review will be a silent flip-through of the entire coloring book so you can make an informed decision as to whether or not it will work for you.

Rather than discuss how this is like or different from the books and/or TV series, I will discuss only how I feel about it as an adult coloring book.

First of all, the illustrations are beautiful. I say illustrations rather than designs because a number of them appear to be finished ink and pen studies rather than designs that a colorist can finish and interpret in their own unique way. For those designs, I can’t envision how I would color them (possibly with watercolors) but I certainly will try as I’m up for a challenge. Because of this, I detracted a star from my rating.

There are still many designs which I feel that I can, as a moderately experienced colorist and artist, be able to color and enjoy. For those, there are intricate details and I may need to use my magnifying lamp to work on those areas.

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Attached to this review will be a silent flip-through of the entire coloring book so you can make an informed decision as to whether or not it will work for you.

Rather than discuss how this is like or different from the books and/or TV series, I will discuss only how I feel about it as an adult coloring book.

I really like this book. What is different about this one from others that I have is that six different artist have contributed to the designs. It makes for a variety of coloring opportunities. Some designs are simple almost child-like. I can color those as-is or put some of my doodling/art skills to work and add some unique elements to the designs. Others are moderately challenging and will be good ones to work on when I simply want to color. Finally, there are designs with a lot of intricate and small detail. They can be colored, but it will be a challenge and one that I will enjoy because these designs are so beautiful.

Physically, the book is very well made. The designs are printed on one side with details from the books written on the back of the page. The pages are thick and white; however, they are not perforated. The binding is glued rather than sewn, so removing pages from the book will be a little more difficult. Most of the designs merge into the binding, but the portions that might be lost if I cut the pages out are not the central theme of the design.

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This my first coloring book by artist Danny Dimm. There are 30 hand-drawn designs in the book which have a wide range of appeal, including animals, landscapes, and flowers. The artist has put a border around the designs. I really appreciate that extra touch as it allows me to finish elements that are only partially in the picture. That is important with this book as there are many lines throughout that end up stopping at the border. Without a border, these are a bit of a nightmare but with the border, they become fun to color and even more fun to experiment with wild colors.

While many of the designs are intricate, they do not contain really small elements. It is easy to get pen, pencil and marker into all parts of the designs. There are a number of bird designs that I especially like, including flamingos and a rooster.

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This fun coloring book by Molly Harrison includes 21 designs of angels both young and adult as well as polar bears and fairies. There is even a design of a collage of snowflakes. While the angels and fairies evoke a holiday theme, the polar bears and snowflake are more of a winter vibe. That’s great with me as I like winter designs, too. It gives me a chance to do some work with blues, whites, and silver as those colors really bring winter to my mind.

The designs range from pretty adults to child-like angels. I especially like a wreath design that has a mixture of young girls and young angels on it. The line drawings range from simple to complex to color. I love Ms. Harrison’s elegant drawings and should have as much fun with this book as I am having with her Halloween and other books.

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