Daily Archives: January 13, 2016

I love Celtic designs and this coloring book has many that will be great to color. There seem to be two major styles of designs in the book: the first is geometric patterns which will be fun to color but which are not what I think of when I think Celtic. There are only a few of these designs. The second style is very antique looking Celtic-inspired vignettes and whirling and twirling designs that I look forward to coloring. Some of these designs have intricate parts but for the most part, they are detailed rather than small and should be fairly easy to color. There are a couple of designs that will be more difficult for those whose eyesight or fine motor control is compromised. There is also an almost gray scale type finish to some areas which actually remind me of pointillism as it is made up of tiny black dots. On the whole, I think it is a great book and will provide fun and some challenging designs to color and really appeals to that small part of Irish in my genetic make up.

The designs are printed on only one side of this good weight perforated paper. Creative Haven does an excellent job with their printing and their paper stock and I can count on them to be consistent. The binding is glued rather than sewn an pages are easily removed if you prefer to do so. The designs all stop well before the perforations so you won’t lose any portion of the design if you remove it from the book. All of the designs have a framing line around them. I really appreciate when an artist does this as it gives me a natural stopping point and a more finished project when I am finished (not to mention saving me time and ink.)

All of my markers, both alcohol and water-based bleed through this paper to some degree. My gels pens leave a color shadow on the back of the page but don’t leak completely through to the following page. My coloring pencils work well as usual for Creative Haven paper and behave as I would expect depending on whether their core is soft or hard. I either remove pages before working on them or I put a blotter sheet under the page I am working on to keep ink from leaking through to the next page. My preference is chipboard but card stock, manilla folders, or several sheets of regular paper work as well. I will list the coloring medium that I test with in the comments section for anyone who is interested.