Daily Archives: March 29, 2016

You can view my review with sample photos of this kit on Amazon by clicking here.

I was happy to find this Harry Potter kit recently. I was a bit surprised to find out how small these were (given the size listed in the description.) I think that the larger dimensions must refer to the cardboard box when it is fully open, as the cards are much smaller. I’ll provide details on the components below. The designs are very small with detailed coloring elements. I suggest only small nib coloring medium with this kit.

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I love the illustrations in this story/coloring book. They are beautifully done. The only issue is that there are simply too few of them. The book turns out to be as much a story book as it is a coloring book. While it is true that there are coloring opportunities on the story book pages, they are mostly filigree style illustrations. I enjoy having a few of those in a coloring book but in this case, there are quite a few. Of the 70 pages in the book, 29 are this type of story book page. Other illustrations also carry text of the story and that is how I would have preferred the majority of the book to have been done. I think that they did an excellent job with those pages but it is not what I was expecting.

The designs are, as I said, beautifully illustrated. It is a very pretty interpretation of Anne of Green Gables. The story jumps around quite a bit, so it will not replace your story book but it can be used in conjunction with reading the book.

The illustrations are open and easy to color but the story book page illustrations are somewhat detailed and have some small areas to color. In a few of the illustrations, the characters faces are not quite finished. I’m not sure if this was done intentionally or if we are expected to finish the facial features. I won’t be doing that, so I will have some blank faces in a few of the designs I color.

I’m a bit disappointed with the number of pages of full designs but not at all with the actual illustrations. If they had put the story book pages on the reverse side of every design page, I would have been a much happier colorist. Those pages could have become my waste page allowing me to use all forms of medium on the designs.

I wish publishing companies would print on one side of the page or at the very least, stop printing into the binding area. I’m always frustrated trying to bend my pages inside out and get my medium nibs into the binding. It takes a bit of the fun out of the coloring experience. Because of the variety of issues, I detracted a star from my rating though I think the illustrations themselves are fantastic. I will happily buy more coloring books by this talented designer.

I will provide a detailed description of the physical book below, but here is what I found in a brief overview:

70 pages of Designs and Story Book Illustrations
Printed on both sides of page-by-age
Pages are heavyweight and non-perforated
Glue Binding
Some Designs merge into the binding
Some Designs spread across two pages
Alcohol-based markers bleed through the page-by-age
Water-based markers do not bleed through
India ink pens do not bleed throughout
Gel pens do not bleed through but require extra drying time
Coloring pencils work extremely well with this paper

The designs in this book are printed on both sides of heavyweight, non-perforated white paper. The binding is glued rather than sewn. Some designs merge into the binding, some do not, and some spread across two pages. If you remove pages from the book, you will probably lose some portion of the design. Depending on the specific page, you may lose important parts of the overall design. I could get the book to lay fairly flat by pressing really hard to break the spine.

I test my coloring books with a wide variety of coloring medium. I will include this list in the comments section below for anyone interested. These are the results of my tests:

Alcohol-based markers bleed through easily. However, that is the only wet medium I tested that did bleed through. Water-based markers, India ink pens, and gel pens did not bleed through and did not leave shadows on the back of the page. Larger nib gel pens (such as Fiskars, Sakura, etc.) did require additional drying time. Coloring pencils worked extremely well with this paper. The soft lead pencils went on very easily and very thick. They layered and blended well. The hard lead pencils make decisive marks of good color and did not dent the back of the page.