Daily Archives: December 6, 2016

Proverbs in Color: Cards to Color and Share

By: Christian Art Gifts

Rating: 5 of 5

This is my third in the series of Christian coloring cards by this publisher. The 44 cards are inspired by the coloring pages in their previous coloring book A Garland of Grace. While the cards are similar to the book, the designs have been reduced, cropped, and/or slightly reworked to fit the new format of a smaller card. All of the cards have quotes and cites to the Proverbs.
For me, the Proverbs are one of the first books in the Bible I search out when I am trying to learn how I should be living my life. There are life lessons to be learned from each quote and sometimes I find them easy and sometimes I find it more difficult even though I know they are right.

While I cannot find translation information on the cards, the coloring book from which they are derived listed the following Bible translations used for the verses are: Holy Bible, New International Version NIV, Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Holy Bible, Contemporary English Version, and Holy Bible, English Standard Version.
The cards are 3 1/8 x 4 1/8 inches. Eight of the cards are in horizontal format and the rest are vertical. The color is very light ivory (almost a warm white), the texture is slightly smooth on the design side and extremely smooth (probably with a coating) on the reverse blank side. They are a great size for on the go.
I found, with my prior sets, that they worked wonderfully at Home Group as both women and men enjoyed finished the evening coloring a card. I also enjoy dropping them in as a small gift with other items as well as coloring them and using them as gift cards or a special pick-me-up gift for my friends and family. It’s so nice that at this wonderful value, I can purchase sets over again when I run out.
The designs are printed fairly small and I found that using my ultra-fine markers, smaller nib gel pens, and hard lead coloring pencils worked the best for me. Some of the cards have very tiny areas to color but that is to be expected with such a small coloring area.
As with the previous sets, not one of of my coloring medium bled through this paper. That includes alcohol-based markers, water-based markers, India ink pens, and gel pens. That makes it some of the best coloring card stock I have used.
My coloring pencils worked well but there wasn’t really enough surface to do much with blending; however, when I tested them, both oil and wax based pencils blended well using a pencil style blending stick.

The Lunar Chronicles Coloring Book

By: Marissa Meyer

Rating: 5 of 5

This is a beautifully illustrated coloring book based on the New York Times Best selling series by Marissa Meyer, The Lunar Chronicles. The designs are by a fan artist, Kathryn Gee. For the most part, the designs represent four of the books in the series (Cinder, Scarlett, Cress, and Winter) though there is one design from Stars Above. The designs wonderfully represent the series which is a great cross of science fiction and fairy tales.

The designs are divided into four sections: The Crew, Allies and Villains, The World of the Lunar Chronicles, and Moments. On the facing page of each design is an excerpt from one of the books or, at the beginning of each section, an interesting note from Ms. Meyer about the process of writing the series.
Each section develops around its theme. In The Crew, there are designs of many characters (and my favorites!), including: Linh Cinder, Emperor Kaito, Iko, Scarlet Benoit, Ze’ev Wolf Kesley, Crescent Moon Cress Darnel, Captain Carswell Thorne, Princess Winter Hayle-Blackburn, and Sir Jacin Clay. The three other sections have additional characters, locations, and scenes from the book. It’s a great representation of the stories for fans of the books.
Additionally, Ms. Meyer tells the fun and interesting story of how the coloring book came to be. I think it is great that Ms. Meyer chose a fan-artist to illustrate the book and the story behind that choice makes the coloring book even more special. There is a special illustration that started the ball rolling on the project. I’ll include that one first in the photos that I upload.
The designs are detailed and will be fun to color. They are not so intricate that they will require special nib pens, markers, etc. but each one will provide hours of coloring time.
This is what I found while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring medium. I will list, in the comments section below, the coloring medium I used to test this book and which I generally use in my coloring projects.
46 Design Pages with quotes from books printed on back of page
Designs printed on one side of the page
Paper is heavyweight, white, slightly smooth, and perforated
Sewn Binding
You can remove pages from the book at the perforations but I don’t plan to do so as it will break the continuity of the story included.
While most designs stop short of the perforations, some designs are printed across the perforations and into the binding area.
Alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper. Rather than remove pages from the book, I use card stock as a blotter when using this medium. It will soak through the design page but the card stock stops it from bleeding through and damaging the page below.
Water-based markers, India ink and gel pens do not bleed through or leave shadows on the back of the page.
Colored Pencils work well with this paper. I tested both oil and wax-base pencils and got good results with both. My tests were for pigment lay down, layering the same color, layering multiple colors, and blending using a pencil style blending stick.