20 Pages of Coloring Designs plus Journal pages printed on one side of non-perforated paper

Life is Beautiful stops just short of being a traditional coloring book. It is a hybrid of a coloring book and a journal. Because of that, it has only 20 pages of coloring designs and a good number of those are encouraging sayings without much coloring opportunity on them. For anyone who has this artist’s first book Magical Forest, this book is quite a departure and shows a different side of the artist’s skill.

I absolutely love a lot of the actual coloring designs. There is a lion’s face, a peacock, and an outstretched hand that I have already started. I usually only test my coloring medium on one designs but I was really drawn to these three and decided to test each one separately. The artist has even included a more literal drawing of a brain and a heart in two designs which is really different and unique for me to find in a coloring book.

All of the designs stop well before the binding. The designs are printed on one side of thin white non-perforated paper that is typical for books published by CreateSpace. The binding is glued but there is plenty of room for you to cut a page out if you choose to do so.

All of my markers bleed through and my gel pens either bleed through or leave a distinct shadow on the back of the page. My coloring pencils work well with the paper. I will use a piece of chipboard or heavy paper behind the page I am working on so I don’t ruin the following page with leaking ink.

While I could wish for thicker, perforated paper, it appears that this is the quality that comes from CreateSpace (which is an Amazon company.) What I really like about the CreateSpace is it is a way that independent artists can get their work self-published. That way, I get a huge choice of design styles albeit with not the best paper.

These are the coloring medium that I use for testing. If there is something else you feel I should be testing, please let me know and I will see if I can add it to my growing pile:

Markers: 1) alcohol-based Copic Sketch, Prismacolor double ended markers (brush and fine point), Sharpies (fine and ultra-fine) and 2) water-based Tombows dual end markers (brush and fine point), Stabilo 88, Staedler triplus fineliners, and Pentel markers

Gel Pens: Sakura, Fiskars, Uni-ball Signo 0.38/0.28 and Tekwriter

Coloring Pencils: Prismacolor Premier Soft Core, Derwent Colorsoft, Prismacolor Verithins, and Faber-Castel Polychromos

I received a free copy of this coloring book for test and review purposes.