Daily Archives: September 14, 2017

Creative Haven Fantasy Butterflies Coloring Book (Adult Coloring)

By: Marty Noble

Rating: 5 of 5

I have and enjoy a number of coloring books by Marty Noble. This book is quite different from those that I already own. The designs focus on butterflies with lots of decorative embellishments within their wings, for instance, butterflies within butterflies or flowers or birds as part of the wing pattern.

This book is a combination of 15 new designs by Ms. Noble and 16 designs which are re-printed from an earlier coloring book by Dover: Fanciful Stained Glass Coloring Book (2012). I don’t own the previous book (which was printed on translucent vellum instead of coloring paper) so getting these designs in the Creative Haven format is really great for me to color.

For my first project, I chose to do a butterfly with butterflies making up its wings. I did the design with regular fine point markers and with the brush end of my Copic markers. This design was fairly easy and open to color but the book contains many designs which are detailed and some with intricate and small spots to color. I’ll post a photo of my first project as well as samples from the book.

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

31 Butterfly designs with lots of decorative touches

Designs are printed one side of the page

Paper is typical of Creative Haven: white, medium weight, slightly smooth and has perforated pages.

Glue Binding with perforations so you can remove them one at a time.

The designs stop well before the perforations

Alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper

Water-based markers bleed through in spots and colorful shadows on the back of the page

Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows of color on the back of the page. India ink pens can bleed through if you apply heavily or with with multiple layers.

Coloring pencils work well with this paper. I was able to use both wax and oil based pencils equally well. I was able to get good color and to get deeper pigment by layering the same color. I found that I could layer multiple colors and blend easily using a blending stick. Hard lead pencils, like Verithins, leave dents on the back of the page.

I prefer to use a blotter page under my working page to keep ink from seeping through or dents from marring the pages below. You can also remove pages from the book to color. I like card stock for my blotter page but a couple of sheets of heavyweight paper work as well.