Monthly Archives: January 2016

This is a really wonderful coloring book filled with many Christian-based designs. I also want to mention immediately that it is one of the better made coloring books that I have purchased but more about that later. The coloring book has 50 pages of designs and additional bookmarks, tags, and cards that you can color and cut out for your use.

What I love about the book is that almost every one of the designs is Christian-based. Many Christian coloring books only devote one third or so of the design pages to providing a Christian message. In this book, page after page is devoted to Bible quotes. The words are incorporated into the design and are part of what you will color. That will make it easy to meditate on the words while I am coloring. The verses are also cited so it is easy to look up and see the words in context.

The book is very well made. The cover is extremely strong hardboard. It is printed on one side only of heavyweight perforated paper. The binding is at the top and is spiral bound. The print quality is excellent and dark. I really appreciate this binding as you can flip to any page and have access to the entire design. The cover then becomes a portable desk which allows you to color easily when on-the-go. While I am not a lefty, spiral bound works fantastic for them as they don’t have to color over the hump of the binding. A few of the designs extend beyond the perforations, which is a little frustrating. I won’t remove these from the book as I will lose a bit of the design if I do. This could be easily solved in future additions to this series by sizing the design to fit below the perforations.

This is printed on great paper. All of my alcohol-based markers bled through but none of my water-based ones did. Gel pens worked fantastic as well and did not bleed through or leave shadows at the back. Coloring pencils worked nicely as well and behaved according to their type of lead (soft/hard core.) This publisher also published a book geared at a younger starting age (but I like it, too!) which has a grade of paper I wish they had used for their other books. That book (Inspirational Coloring Book for Girls) does not even allow for alcohol-based markers to bleed through. In any case, put a piece of card stock or chipboard or even heavyweight paper below the page you are working on and you will prevent ink from seeping through.

These are the coloring medium that I use for testing. If there is something else you feel I should be testing, please let me know and I will see if I can add it to my growing pile:

Markers: 1) alcohol-based Copic Sketch, Prismacolor double ended markers (brush and fine point), Sharpies (fine and ultra-fine) and 2) water-based Tombows dual end markers (brush and fine point), Stabilo 88, Staedler triplus fineliners, and Pentel markers

Gel Pens: Sakura, Fiskars, Uni-ball Signo 0.38/0.28 and Tekwriter

Coloring Pencils: Prismacolor Premier Soft Core, Derwent Colorsoft, Prismacolor Verithins, and Faber-Castel Polychromos