32 Garden Designs with Treasure Hunt Elements printed on one side of page

I love to garden so getting a coloring book about gardening is always fun for me. This particular book by Robin Pickens has additional fun in that there is a hidden treasure element on each page. There is a clue about which element is on the page (you find it on the back side of the page.) Before seeing it, I was generally at a loss but once I knew what I was looking for, I could find it fairly easily. There is a key at the back of the book to show you the general area in which to look.

I really like that there are designs which involve more aspects of gardening than just flowers. There are many of flowers as well but there is one of a gardener, gardening tools, a beehive, and more.

Each of the pages is surrounded with a pre-colored border. The borders are in three different colors: lime green, mint green, and pink. I decided to not let the border color influence my color choices and treat them as a neutral. Surprisingly, it worked out well for me. My first project was of flowers and I used both alcohol and water based markers. I enjoyed coloring it but I realized later I should have looked at the pre-colored designs to more fully understand how the artist envisioned her illustrations. My project isn’t stellar but I had a lot of fun coloring it.

I will provide more detail about the physical coloring book below but here is an overview of what I found:

32 Garden Designs with Hidden Treasure Hunt element
Printed on one side of medium weight perforated paper
Design pages have colorful borders
Designs stop before the perforations
Glue Bound
Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through the page
India Ink pens bleed through the page
Gel pens do not bleed through
Coloring pencils work well with the paper

This is a coloring book published by Design Original books. As usual with their books, this book includes many examples of colored artwork. Along with that are some tips from the artist on such things as color combinations and tips on how to embellish the design.

The designs in this book are printed on one side of the perforated medium weight page. Each of the pages has a colorful border. On the backside of each page is the item you can find in the treasure hunt in the design, the title of the design, a fun saying, and several blank lines on which you can journal or simply note information about your project.

The binding is glued but you will want to remove pages at the perforations. The designs stop before the perforations so you will not lose any portion of the design if you remove it from the book. The book can be made to open to a flat position by pressing hard on the inside of the spine.

I test my various coloring books with a variety of coloring mediums. I will list those I used to test this book in the comments area of the review. Here are what my various tests discovered:

Alcohol and water-based markers as well as India ink pens bleed through the paper. Gel pens do not but need a little extra drying time. Coloring pencils work well with this paper. I was able to easily blend my soft lead pencils. My hard lead pencils left dents on the back of the page.

I recommend using a blotter page below the page you are working on to keep ink or dents from marring the design on the next page.