I have enjoyed Mary Engelbreit’s designs for many years and have her first coloring book in this series as well. This new book is every bit as cute and fun to color in as “Color ME”. There are a number of my favorite designs included though I am still looking in vain for “Snap Out of It”. I hope it will appear in a later book though I doubt it will be in her Christmas book slated for publishing later this year.
There are 48 designs in this book including the cute title page. I like that so many of the designs involve garden themes as I am just getting quite busy out in my garden at this time of year. There are some detailed designs and some that are a little more on the simple side. Those are ones that I will probably pull out of the book and let my younger visitors color when we have a game/color night party.
I love the that the designs are printed on one side of the page. That will allow me to use a wide variety of coloring mediums, especially my Tombows and other markers.
Here is a quick overview of what I found in this book:
48 Cute Designs by Mary Englebreit (includes title page)
Printed on one side of the page
Pages are white, smooth to the touch, heavyweight and perforated
Glue Bound
Book lays fairly flat if you press down hard to break the spine
Designs stop well before the perforations
Alcohol-based markers bleed through quickly
Water-based markers leave spots of color on the back of the page though Stabilo triplus fineliners did the best of the bunch by only leaving colorful shadows
India Ink pens bleed through the page in spots as well.
Gel pens do not bleed through but 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. While the pencils all blended, they did so unevenly with very light blends and most of the color staying in the original spot. Hard lead pencils such as Verithins provided good color and crisp lines and did not dent the back of the page.
If you use markers, I suggest that you either remove pages from the book to color or use a blotter page below your working page. That way you can keep ink from seeping through and damaging the design pages below.
