Great kit with 24 Staedtler coloring pencils and beautiful book with intricate garden designs printed both sides of paper

This is a fantastic kit for an intermediate and above colorist. The book is filled with beautiful designs and it is always great to have coloring pencils. If the beginner has great eyesight and a steady hand, they could tackle it as well. This is entirely due to the intricate and beautiful detail of some of the designs within the book. It would be much too advanced for a young child to tackle.

The pencils are a nice set of 24 colors by Staedtler. They have triangular shaped barrels which makes them easier to grip for longer periods of time. They arrive pre-sharpened but I had to sharpen them again to get a good fine point. Speaking of which, you will need to get a good manual sharpener to go along with this kit, using no more than a couple of dollars. Using electric pencil sharpeners will chew your pencils up in no time and may cause points to break unnecessarily. The color seems to be a medium core. It holds its point well and provides a medium coverage. With my sharpest points, I could color in the finest details in the book.

The designs in this book remind me of time in a garden. There are many flowers and various animals as well as birds and birdhouses. I am very impressed by the beauty of these hand-drawn designs and look forward to many hours of coloring enjoyment with the book.

The designs are printed on both sides of heavyweight white paper that is not perforated. The book is well made with a lovely fold out cover where both the outer and inner parts of the cover can be colored, too. I counted more than 50 designs most of which are two page designs. The designs merge into the binding and some of the two page designs do not line up perfectly when I flatten the book. The binding is sewn rather than glued, so you can remove the pages with a few snips of thread every few pages. I would not attempt to cut pages out of this book as you will certainly cut away some portions of the designs on both the front and back of the page. For most of the two page designs, I can treat them as single page designs if I choose to do so as their shared elements are so insignificant.

I tested the book with the included pencils and also with other common coloring mediums. My markers had a mixed result when it came to coloring in this book. The only ones that consistently did not leak through were my Staedtler triplus fineliners. My Tombows dual end brush did not leak when I used the brush end but did with the marker end. All other markers both water and alcohol-based leaked through. My gel pens did not leak through but needed extra drying time. My various other styles and brands coloring pencils all worked well. I would test my markers before using them in this book to be sure that a specific color does not leak through and ruin the design on the back on the page.

I was provided a free sample of this coloring book kit for test and review purposes.