Daily Archives: September 6, 2016

By: Nicole J. Percy

Rating: 5 of 5

I’ve been a fan of House Mouse for years. I have a number of items around the house with the sweet little mice on them. I have cross stitched several designs with plans for more (great book is available on Amazon), so when I found this coloring book, it was an immediate purchase for me.

The book has 21 cute designs. The designs are heavy on fur detail and has a bit of shading via dots (think pointillism.) I find the designs are very easy to color and are fun and quick projects that I really enjoy. While there are specific House Mouse characters, I choose to color my mice to my own fashion. Some of the designs are a bit more detailed to color but nothing with intricate or tiny details. Some of the designs seem almost like grayscale coloring because of the use of shading.

This is what I found while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring medium. I will list, the comments section below, the coloring medium I use for testing and for coloring.

21 House Mouse Designs from simple to more detailed in nature

Printed one side of the page

Paper is typical of CreateSpace published books. It is thin, white, slightly rough and non-perforated

Glue Bound

Designs do not merge into the binding area and there is plenty of room to cut out design if you choose to do so

Alcohol-based markers seep through the paper quickly.

Water-based markers seep through in spots.

Gel pens and India ink pens leave colorful shadows on the back of the page. India ink pens can spot through if several coats are applied or if you use the ink heavily.

Colored pencils worked well with this paper. It has a roughness to the texture which grips the pigment well. I used both oil and wax based pencils and was able to get good results from layering the same color, multiple colors, and blending with a blending stick. Hard lead pencils left dents which could read through to the page below.

I use and recommend the use of a blotter page to keep seeping ink and dents from marring the pages below your working page. I like card stock but a couple of pages of heavyweight paper work well, too.

Hello Angel Winter Wonderland Coloring Collection (Hello Angel Coloring Collection)

By: Angelea Van Dam

Rating: 4 of 5

As a quick note, the cover of the book currently showing on Amazon (skater’s boots) is not the cover of the book I received. My cover (as seen in my video) has a montage of skates, gloves, and scarves. It is the same book but obviously the cover on Amazon was a concept photo and not what was actually used in publishing. Both designs are in the book in the smaller, medium size format.

Once again, I love the designs in this book but am less than pleased with the face that the publisher is printing 10 of the designs in less than full size. Admittedly, in this book, they have shrunk the designs less than in others but I wish that they would go back to all full size designs. They have included a thumbnail color sample and some sample colors used in their design for inspiration. It takes up the bottom 1 inches of the page. In the last few book I purchased, it took up a full 3 inches of the page. This information could be printed on a separate page or on the actual color sample page rather than on the coloring page. Because of the shrinking of the designs, I have detracted a star from my rating of this book.

In this book, it makes a big difference. Hello Angel books have intricate and detailed designs. By shrinking them down, it takes them from slightly difficult to challenging. I can’t recommend this book for anyone with vision or fine motor issues because of the complexity of the designs and especially for the tiny size of the designs elements.

The designs are really beautiful. They speak to both winter and to the holiday season. I really appreciate the level of detail this designer has put into her work. I like using colored pencils with really sharp points because of the tiny spaces but it is fun and something that I enjoy. The smaller designs are much more difficult to deal with but, for me, there is a way around it but it is at an additional cost.

A good number of the designs in this book (including those that were reduced in size) are available in full size in two of Design Originals anthology Christmas coloring books this year: Deck and Halls and Merry and Bright. I own all three books and it doesn’t bother me to have the duplications as buying the three books gave me most of the full size designs I wished for in this book.

This is what I found while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring medium. In the comments section below, I will list the coloring medium I use for testing and coloring.

32 Intricate and Detailed Winter inspired designs 22 Full Size and 10 Medium Size

Printed one side of the page back of page has a softly colored design, journal lines and a quote appropriate to the subject of the coloring book

Paper is medium weight, white, slightly rough and perforated

Glue Binding

Designs stop well before the perforations

Alcohol-based markers bleed through the page quickly.

Water-based markers bleed through the page in heavy spots.

Gel pens and India ink pens can spot through to the back of the page

Colored pencils work well with the paper. Both oil and wax based pencils provide good color, layer, and blend well. Hard lead pencils can dent through the page.

I use a blotter page of card stock or heavyweight paper (two sheets0 to keep seeping ink and dents from marring the pages below. I recommend using a blotter or that you remove pages before coloring.