Daily Archives: October 17, 2016

Fun and Romantic novel about starting over

Posted on October 17, 2016 by Iiiireader

The One You Really Want

By: Jill Mansell

Rating: 5 of 5

Carmen and Nancy have been best friends since childhood. Carmen is dealing with her own depression after losing her beloved husband only three years before but when Nancy’s marriage takes a bad turn, Carmen is there to help.

Nancy moves from her suburban house in Scotland to Carmen’s mansion in London to start her life over. With the move comes the shedding of her old life and she realizes it is more than time to move on. Carmen is going through a similar phase in life but has the extra baggage of being extremely rich. Whether she likes it or not, it is an issue and one that she tried to deal with in a variety of amusing ways.

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33 Winter Inspired Designs printed on both sides of the page

Posted on October 17, 2016 by iiiireaderadmin

My Wondrous World: Enchanted Winter Adult Coloring Book

By: Masja Van Den Berg

Rating: 4 of 5

This is a hand-drawn coloring book which is inspired by winter. There are a number of animal designs as well as mandalas, paisleys, and other abstract swirl designs. Many of the designs have a doodle style of detail. There are also several designs which bring snowflakes to mind.

A number of the designs are printed across two pages and those designs lose a bit of their continuity as the designs disappear into the binding. Even when I break the spine to lay the book flat, a tiny portion is missing. And due to the type of binding the book has, when I forced the book into a flat position, there were a number of little tears at the bound edge as there are multiple stitches as well as glue in the binding. I’ll try to post a picture of the issue.
The rest of the book has designs that stop short of the binding and those are much easier to color. The designs are detailed and some have intricate parts to color. Apart from the binding issue (above) and blending issues with colored pencils (below), I really enjoyed coloring in this book.
33 Winter Inspired designs by Masja van den Berg
Designs printed on both sides of the page
Paper is soft white, fairly smooth, heavyweight (or light weight card stock) and non-perforated
Binding is hybrid of sewn (many stitches) and glued
Designs disappear into the binding area and some part of two page spread designs are missing because of it
My copy was slightly off in lining up on two page designs
Alcohol-based markers bleed through the page
Water-based markers, India ink and gel pens did not bleed through or leave shadows on the back of the page. Gel pens took a considerable amount of time to dry.
Colored pencils were mixed. I could put down a pigment well and could layer as well. However, when trying to blend with a blending stick, the colors smeared lightly rather than blend.