So Many Great Christmas Designs but the scavenger hunt falls flat printed on only one side of page

Be Merry: An Inkcredible Christmas Scavenger Hunt and Coloring Book

By: H.R. Wallace Publishing

Rating: 5 of 5

This book has many great coloring designs for the holidays. Where it falls down a bit is on the scavenger hunt. In many cases, it the hidden item is the major point of the design and is, necessarily, in plain view. For instance, five bells and the design is five bells. While I do enjoy finding hidden items, it was not the reason that I picked up this book.

I love Christmas and Christmas related items and I naturally gravitate towards Christmas themed coloring books, too. This book of designs has all sorts of Christmas items. There are Christmas trees, Santa, stockings, candles, bells, deer, snowflakes, snowmen, ornaments, stockings, deer, birds, pine cones and much more. There are a variety of design styles which says to me that many artists work is represented in the book. For this type of book, that makes it even more fun for me. I get to pick and choose based on my mood. Some of the designs are complex and have small intricate areas to color and some are open and flowing and should be easy to color.

The book is glue bound non-perforated white paper. The paper is on the thin side and the designs are printed on only one side of the page. On the back side is a small listing of the scavenger hunt items in mirror backward type. The designs either have a frame around the outside or have all of the elements finished fully. I really appreciate this as design that leave open edges are a bit of a nit for me. I hate having to try to draw my own finish on the edge of bits and piece of items in the design that just suddenly stop. All of the designs in this book stop well before the binding, so cutting pages out should not be too difficult.

Because of the thinner paper, all of my markers bleed through. While my various gel pens did not, they did leave a bit of a shadow on the backside. My coloring pencils worked well on the surface of the paper. I will be using all types of coloring tools with this book because I won’t be ruining a design on the backside. I’ll just put a piece of chip board in place (or heavy weight paper or card stock) and that will keep the ink from going further into the book.

This book could have been improved in a number of ways. Improving means a higher cost, so everything is relative. I’m okay with the book as-is but had the pages been perforated and/or a higher quality of paper used, it would have been even better. I hope more publishers go with perforated paper in the future. For me, it is the added convenience of removing pages but for the left-handed colorist, it makes a world of difference as they have to color over the hump of the binding.