Daily Archives: September 4, 2017

Mary Engelbreit’s Color ME Christmas Coloring Book

By: Mary Engelbreit

Rating: 5 of 5

I own both of Mary Engelbreit’s previous coloring books in the Color ME line and am really pleased to now have the newest one, Color Me Christmas. I’ve been a fan of Ms. Engelbreit’s artwork for much of my life. Many of the iconic designs I associate with her Christmas artwork are included in this book especially the Believe Santa (which is the last page in the book and had me worried that it was not going to be in the book.)

There are 48 Christmas inspired designs in this book which includes the title page. There are so many designs that I will want to color in this book. I noticed that there are less of the simple style pages that were included in the last two books. For those few pages, I plan on having my grandchildren color them once they are old enough. My grandson does color in books already but not to the level of detail in even the simplest of these designs.)

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

48 Christmas inspired designs (includes title page)based on iconic Mary Engelbreit artwork.

Designs are printed on one side of the page

The paper are white, fairly smooth to the touch, heavyweight and perforated

Glue Bound

Designs stop well before the perforations

Alcohol-based markers bleed through the paper

Most water-based markers leave spots of color on the back of the page. The exception I had was that while Stabilo triplus finerliners left colorful shadows on the back of the page, they did not spot through the paper.

India Ink pens bleed through the page in spots.

Gel pens do not bleed through but larger nib pens need a little extra drying time.

Coloring pencils did well except for blending. Both wax and oil based pencils provided good color with both a light and a firm touch. They layered well with both the same color or multiple colors. I found that blending was a little smeary. Hard lead pencils such as Verithins provided good color and crisp lines and did not dent the back of the page.

I suggest either removing pages for coloring or using a blotter page below your working page if you are using a wet medium. That will keep seeping ink from marring the pages below.