Daily Archives: March 23, 2016

This is my second coloring book by Eleri Fowler. It is as beautiful as the previous one Joyous Blooms. My Mother My Heart is filled with beautiful flowers, butterflies, perfumes, tea cups and many more items associated with mothers and women in general. The concept of the book is dedicated to mothers (and grandmothers) and would make a beautiful gift for Mother’s Day either for Mom to color or for you to color for her. Beyond the designs themselves, there are many pages with quotes and sayings for Mom. There is each a full page dedicated to Mother and to Grandmother where various names for each (in different languages, too) make up the majority of the design.

The designs have a good amount of detail but are not what I would call intricate. A few of the designs do have fairly small elements but those are rare in the book. What is great is that every single page of the book has areas that can be colored, from the title page at the beginning to the last page (About the Author.) That makes it a wonderful value and a really fun book to color.

I lost my mother a few years ago and I really miss her all of the time and especially as Mother’s Day approaches. I can’t give her this book but I can color the pictures and think of her. I can also think of my place as a Mother to my daughters. It’s interesting to think that my own daughter is a Mother, too. I plan to give her a gift of this book as well this year.

I will go into more details about the physical aspects of this coloring book below. Here is an overview of what I found:

96 Pages of Hand-drawn and Pretty Designs
Printed on both sides of Heavyweight, white, non-perforated paper
Sewn Binding (many stitches versus just a few)
Designs merge into the binding
Book lays fairly flat when pressed hard
Alcohol-based markers bleed through easily
Water-based markers bleed through the page as well-loved
India ink pens leave shadows of color on the back of the page
Gel pens do not leak through the page
Coloring pencils work well with this paper

The designs are printed on both sides of the heavyweight, non-perforated page. I was able to get the book to lay fairly flat by breaking the spine. The binding is a hybrid of glued and sewn. The sewn binding is the type that has many stitches rather than just a few. Some of the designs merge into the binding while others stop just short of the sewn area. Four of the designs spread shared elements across two pages though a number more are probably designs to be viewed together. In my copy, the alignment of the two-page spreads is excellent. Also, with these four, the designs do not merge into the binding. If you hyper-extend the book, you will see a small strip of white of either side of the stitches. This allows me to get into that area to color but is not noticeable when casually looking through the book.

Because of the binding and the way the designs merge in (though nothing of note is lost in the binding), I will not be removing pages from this book. If you wish to do so, you will have to cut them out and you will probably lose some portion of the design in doing so.

I test my coloring books with a variety of mediums. I will list the type of tests I conduct as well as the mediums I used in the comments section below. Here are the results of my tests:

I must admit that I was a little disappointed with this paper as compared to that of my first book by this author. It is certain that a lesser grade of paper was used in this book as the results of my tests were wildly different. I was so surprised, I went back and double checked both books against each other using the exact same markers/pens/pencils in exactly the same manner. The test results showed different results for each book with the new book being less desirable. While the results of the tests disappointed me, the designs did not. I still really enjoy this book and am pleased to have it in my coloring collection.

My various alcohol-based markers bled through this paper. My water-based markers also bled through to a lesser degree. My India ink pens left shadows of color on the back of the page. My gel pens did not leak through nor did they require extra drying time. The soft lead pencils went on thick with full coverage and blended beautifully. The hard lead pencils worked well and did not leave indents on the back of the page.

If you choose to use anything other than gel pens and coloring pencils, you will mar the design on the reverse side of the page. I would suggest that you use a blotter page to keep the ink confined to just the back of the page and not ruin the following pages.