Huge amount and variety of designs in this beautifully bound book printed on both sides of page

The Art of Mindfulness: Happy and Energized Coloring

By: Michael O’Mara Books

Rating: 5 of 5

This is a book filled with more than 90 fantastic and lovely designs to color. While it certainly made me happy to see the large assortment to choose from, I’m not sure how energized it will make me feel. There are a number of designs with animals and insects in motion, so perhaps that is the idea. The designs cover a wide range from plants and animals to birdcages and teacups. There are a number of artist involved with this book and it shows in the wide variety of styles. This is one of a series of books and I will be picking up the others based on how much I like this one.

The cover of this book is gorgeous it is a matte metallic purple with paisleys, some of which have glossy highlighting. The book is printed on a nice quality heavyweight white paper. The paper is non-perforated and the pages are printed on both sides of the page. The binding is sewn, so removing the pages should be a matter of snipping various threads every few pages to completely remove the pages from the book. The book has rounded edges on the unbound side and is slightly smaller than a regular sheet of paper. The designs stop well before the binding; however, many of them leave elements unfinished without a frame of sorts to finish off the design. This makes it more difficult for me to color the design and have a nice finished quality to it.

All of my alcohol-based markers bled through immediately. My Stabilo 88’s did, too. Only some of my Staedler triplus fineliner markers did (the darker colors.) What worked great were my Tombow dual brush markers. These did not bleed through at all. None of my gel pens had problems and my coloring pencils did well on the surface of this paper.

I like the book and the designs but the publishing of the book could have been improved in a number of ways: 1) print one side of the page only; 2) make the pages perforated for easy removal from the book, 3) if you are going to printed on both sides of the page, improve the quality of the paper so that markers can be used, and finally, my own personal nit put frames around the outside of designs that simply stop mid-element.