Daily Archives: January 26, 2016

This is a cute coloring book of cat designs, especially the first few pages which show a short hair cat venturing on his vacation to Paris. The beautiful design that is on the cover of this book is definitely included inside. Every page has something fun to color even the ones that I would categorize as wall-paper make me want to reach for my pens and pencils and get started. After the first few pages, the book evolves into a very well done book of cats in various poses and situations. I know many of the situations all too well from my years of having cats as pets. I like that there are both intricately drawn cats as well as what amounts to line drawings of cats. The former gives me a challenge in coloring in small spaces and the latter gives me opportunities to test my blending skills to create what I want of the cat. My one major issue with the book is that it is supposed to be about cats in Paris and there are only a few pictures that can be categorized as such.

The book has a removable dust cover. Both the inside of the dustcover and the actual attached cover have some fun coloring opportunities. The designs in the book are printed on both sides of the great heavyweight non-perforated paper. Designs run into the binding and many of the designs spread across two pages. In my copy, the pages line up very well. The binding is a hybrid of sewn and glued actually the binding I dislike most of all impossible to snip the threads but so many that when you push the book down hard, the threads seems to pull at the page. You simply have to cut the pages if you want to remove them and given the layout of the designs, you will lose portions of them if you take them out of the book. I am able to get the lay flat and will color the pages in the book because of the extent of coloring medium I can use.

My alcohol-based markers were the only coloring medium that bled through the page. All makes, sizes, and brands. My water-based markers of all types and sizes, my India ink artist pens, and my gel pens did not leak through or leave any shadows. The gel pens did not need extra drying time. I did notice that both the smallest nib gel pens and my hard pencils could leave an indent if I was a bit heavy-handed in my coloring something to think about when you go to color in this book. My coloring pencils worked fantastic, especially the soft lead that went on thick and creamy and blended well. My decision is to not use alcohol-based markers with this book. There are so many other choices, I don’t need to. If you do use them, be aware that the ink will leak through and not only ruin the back of the page but could leak through further into the book. In the comments area below, I will provide a list of the coloring medium I used in testing this book.

Escape to Wonderland is the second coloring book I have by Good Wives and Warriors (artists Becky Bolton and Louise Chappell.) It is a smaller format book (at approximately 7.5 x 7.25 inches) but is packed with lots of fantastic deisgns. If you include the title page, there are a whopping 96 pages of designs in this book. The book tells the excerpted story (both in written and design form) of Alice in Wonderland. The characters are imagined in new ways which makes it so much fun to color. I have a more traditional version of Alice and I know I will like this new coloring book just as much as my other one. Some of the designs have intricate and small details that may prove challenging for some individuals.

The designs are printed on both sides of heavyweight cream colored non-perforated paper. Twenty-six of the designs spread across two pages. In my book, these two page designs line up very well and if I press the book flat, I don’t have any lose of design into the binding.

The attached cover of the book is well made and has gold foil, two shades of blue touches. You can color the remainder of the cover (front and back) if you wish. The inside of the cover has fold-outs (front and back) and a white on blue line print which you can also color. The rest of the pages are designs, so you can literally color this book on every page, if you choose to do so. A few of the pages have words on them and those are generally incorporated into the design. A couple of them are primarily the words with a small amount of coloring designs on the page. The binding is sewn rather than glued, so removing pages will require a few snips of threads every few pages. I won’t be taking mine apart as I think it is a lovely little book that tells a story that I want to keep together.

My alcohol-based markers bled through immediately. None of my ultra-fine point water-based markers bled through but you could see the fainest of shadows on the backside of the page when I used really dark colors (both Stabilo 88 and Staedler triplus fineliners.) My India ink artist pens and my gel pens did not bleed through, did not have shadows and, in the case of the gel pens, did not need extra drying time. All of my coloring pencils did well and performed as I would expect for the brand and type (soft or hard lead.)

This series is one of the prettiest of the small coloring books I have in my collection. They are extremely portable and fit in my purse well. I hope to see more coloring books by these talented artists in the future.