Daily Archives: March 24, 2016

I was extremely pleased to find a devotional/coloring book by Ann-Margret Hovsepian. I was first introduced to some of her work in one of my favorite Christian coloring books Whatever is Lovely. I pre-ordered Restore My Soul based on that and was wonderfully surprised at the 40 hand-drawn illustrations but most importantly, by the personal stories which are included in the devotional portion of the book. There are Bible quotes as well as quotes by others and sayings through the designs and the Bible quotes are taken from a variety of translations of the Bible.

Each of the designs has a devotional dedicated to it (illustration on the right on page, devotional on the left.) While some of the illustrations do not appear to be Christian on their face, once you read the devotional, you can easily see how the image ties to the study. Ms. Hovsepian has chosen to make the devotionals based on her personal life and experience. She provides a quote and cite from the Bible, tells how her life has been impacted by it, and then goes on to invite you to consider on your life, as a Christian, has been changed by the this Word.

For my first project, I chose a mandala style design that goes along with a devotional about days not always being sunny and where we are to look at those times. I decided to color the mandala as a sunny day down below but with ominous clouds and storms stretching far beyond. I wanted to remind myself whether days are bright or stormy, we are not to look at what is physically around us. This is especially poignant to me today as we had fairly scarey storms yesterday with high winds, tornadoes, and big hail. While the storm raged, I colored my mandala and thought about where I placed my trust.

I will provide more details about the physical coloring book below, but here is an overview of what I found:

40 Hand-drawn illustrations most with Christian themes
40 Christian Devotionals
Designs printed on one side of heavyweight white page
Page is not perforated
Glue Binding
Some designs merge into the binding area
Book could be forced into a flat position for coloring
Alcohol and water based markers bleed through the page
India ink pens left a shadow on the back of the page
Gel pens did not leak through but needed extra drying time
Coloring pencils work well with this paper

The designs in the book are printed on one side of heavyweight, non-perforated white paper. The devotions are printed on the reverse side of the preceding page that way you are looking at the appropriate devotional while you are coloring. The binding is glued rather than sewn, so you will have to cut pages out if you want to remove them from the book. A number of designs do merge into the binding but you won’t lose anything of importance if you cut the page out.

I test my books with a variety of tests and coloring mediums. I will include that information in the comments section below. Here are the results of my tests on this book:

Alcohol and water based markers both bleed through the page. India ink pens leave a shadow of color on the backside of the page. Gel pens don’t leak through but did need extra time for drying. Coloring pencils worked well the soft lead had good coverage and could layer and blend well while the hard lead made dark lines but did not dent the back of the page.

I don’t intend to remove pages from the book as I want to keep the devotionals right at hand. It does make it frustrating with I am working with designs that disappear into the binding as it did with my first project just trying to get my markers into the area was a challenge. I used, and recommend that others use, a piece of card stock as my blotter to keep the ink from straying further into the book.