30 Modern Folk Art Hand-Drawn Designs of Animals and Flowers printed on one side of white perforated paper

This is one of three new coloring books by Lisa Congdon and while I like all three and am enjoying coloring them, this one is my favorite. It has the flowers that I enjoy along with some charming animals (I especially liked coloring the hedgehog.) There are scenes of animals and flowers, flowers or plants by themselves, and collages of various items. While I don’t keep bees, I know people who do and as a gardener I appreciate their work on keeping bee colonies viable. I think the design of the beehive is adorable and I look forward to coloring it, too.

I have found that Ms. Congdon’s work has a beautiful open feel to it. I like being able to experiment with color blocks and also to do some shading and blending and her designs are perfect for both techniques. I especially like this book for people who don’t or can’t color books with tiny, intricate spaces. It is a great book for individuals with fine motor or vision issues.

There are four colored samples of pages included in the book each one is placed behind the coloring design it depicts. That actually makes it more difficult to view while coloring if you choose. I don’t intend to use them that way but you can remove them and frame them if you like.

The book is really well put together. The designs are all printed on one side of perforated heavyweight paper. About half of the designs merge into the perforations but nothing essential is lost to that area. If you plan on removing pages, you might want to do so before coloring as it is hard to get into the areas near the binding and you will lose that area when you remove the page in any case. The book is glue bound but as you will remove pages at the perforations, that should not be an issue. I was easily able to get the book to lay flat by breaking the spine.

All of my markers (alcohol and water-based) as well as my India ink pens bleed through or left distinct color shadows on the back of the page. My gel pens all left color shadows as well. Not an issue as you can put a blotter page behind the page you are working on or simply remove the page from the book to color it. Coloring pencils worked really well in this book. The pencils went on creamy and thick without much effort and blending was a breeze. I was even able to blend my Verithin hard lead pencils using a simply Prismacolor pencil style blender. In the comments section below, I will list the coloring medium I used to test this coloring book.