Daily Archives: December 11, 2015

Inky Mandalas Mix is artist Helen Elliston’s fourth coloring book and is her second one devoted to the mandala form. Her first mandala book Inky Mandalas was wonderfully surprising with unusual takes on the style. With this second volume, she has gone even further with fun and imaginative offerings. The themes include: coloring pencils (a really great opportunity to use lots of colors!), Russian dolls, clocks and gears (very steampunk), a compass, dragons, baby chicks, and lots of others including a few more standard mandalas in abstract and geometric patterns. As always with Ms. Elliston’s coloring books, the designs are simply beautiful. Many of the designs are quite intricate and have small details as well.

All of the design stop well before the binding. The designs are printed on one side of thin white non-perforated paper that is typical for books published by CreateSpace. The binding is glued but there is plenty of room for you to cut a page out if you choose to do so. I like that this book is in a smaller format than her other books. It saves wasted paper (top and bottom of design) and gives me a finished project that is easier to frame if I wish to do so.

All of my markers bleed through and my gel pens either bleed through or leave a distinct shadow on the back of the page. My coloring pencils work well with the paper. I will use a piece of chipboard or heavy paper behind the page I am working on so I don’t ruin the following page with leaking ink.

While I could wish for thicker, perforated paper, it appears that this is the quality that comes from CreateSpace (which is an Amazon company.) What I really like about the CreateSpace is it is a way that independent artists can get their work self-published. That way, I get a huge choice of design styles albeit with not the best paper. The trade-off works well for me.