Daily Archives: May 14, 2018

This is my first floral coloring book by Ruth Soffer so these designs are all new to me. It is a coloring book of large tropical blossoms. On most of the designs, a single blossom or two take center stage. On a few, there is more detail. I grew up and spent most of my adult life in Southern California with many tropical flowers and had a lovely garden where I grew them. As I had family living in Hawaii, I also visited the Islands often. A lot of these flowers remind me of those years.

I was especially pleased to see that the artist included the name of each flower and, interestingly, it was printed on the bound side of the perforations. That way, if you want to remove the page, you don’t have printing on it.

What I didn’t like was that the designs were printed without a frame line at the outer edges. It makes it very difficult to color as unfinished elements simply stop with about a half inch of white margin on all sides. It is also strange as Creative Haven generally has framing lines. What’s also strange is that the two sample designs included in the book (I’ll include them in the photos I post), do have framing lines but their line drawing counterparts do not. As this effects almost every designs to some extent, I dropped my rating to a 4.

The flowers included in the book are (by commonly known name): Hawaiian clermontia, Milkweed, Freesia, Velvetleaf, Hawaiian loosestrife, Heliconia, New South Wales waratah, Miltonia Orchid, Bromeliad, Dahlia, Gladiola, African Daisy, African violet, Tropical water lily, Plumeria, Anthurium, Waimea Canyon nehe, Hibiscus, Manuka, Hawaiian hoawa, Flame lily, Tahian gardenia, Camellia, Hawaiian geranium, Rhododendron, Bleeding heart, Rain lily, Treasure flower, Shell ginger, African tulip and bat flower.

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