Daily Archives: March 2, 2016

This is a coloring book which depicts the lyrics to the beautiful old hymn It is Well with my Soul. The coloring book is illustrated by Lizzie Preston, who has created lovely designs to match the words (when possible.) The hand-drawn book has 45 pages of designs. It also has 45 pages of lightly illustrated lyrics. The lyrics are printed on the page opposite the design (thus, on the back of the preceding design page.) The designs are primarily nature scenes, with birds, flowers, landscapes, seascapes, forest scenes, ponds, and so much more. The designs include many doodled elements which allow the colorist the opportunity to color with many colors.

The story behind the lyrics make them that much more poignant. It was written by Horatio Spafford at a troubled time in his life in 1873 (though published first in 1876.) Spafford had had some devastating economic troubles due to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Two years later, when his family was beginning to recover, they decided to take a vacation in Europe. While he was delayed, his wife and four daughters went without him. The ship sank and all four daughters were lost. Only his wife was saved. When he traveled to meet her, he wrote the lyrics to the hymn. It is amazing that he could find this type of peace at such a time and are a testament to the strength and peace that God brings. The words of this hymn have given many, including myself, comfort at times when life’s troubles feel overpowering.

The actual designs of the coloring book are printed on one side of perforated white heavy weight paper. Portions of the lyrics are printed on the back of each design page. The binding is glued rather than sewn but you will probably remove pages at the perforations if you choose to do so. The designs stop before the perforations so you will not lose any portion of the design if you decide to take the page out of the book.

I test all of my coloring books with a large variety of coloring mediums. I will list the actual coloring mediums I test in the comments section below. This is what I discovered in testing this book:

All alcohol-based markers bled through to the back of the page. All water-based markers and India ink artist pens left distinct shadows of color on the backside of the page. Gel pens worked well but required a little more drying time than usual. They did not leak through the paper. Coloring pencils worked beautifully with the soft lead pencils laying down thick and creamy color that was extremely easy to blend. The hard lead pencils worked well, the color was deeper than on some less expensive paper, and they did not leave dents on the back of the page.

If I decide to use markers (which I probably will), I will do so knowing that it will mar the lyrics page. For me, that is a fair trade off. I will use a blotter page to keep the ink from seeping further into the book. If you want to color both sides of the page, I recommend using gel pens or colored pencils.