55 Abstract Designs in Mosaic style printed on one side of cream page

Jessica Mazurkiewicz is one of the first two artists to release coloring books on Dover’s new Escapes line. The books are still standard size but are presented horizontally with each of the designs being horizontal as well.

I own a couple of Creative Haven books by this artist in her Scapes series. This is the first mosaic style book that I have from her. I was surprised to see that many of the designs look similar as if they were there were only a handful of original designs but for ensuing pages they cropped and/or enlarged to show details rather than the whole image. I am really enjoying coloring the designs (mainly using Tombows brush water markers at this point) but with so many that are similar my interest may wane before I finish the book as there are 55 designs in it.

The book does not have colored samples in it (unlike Dover’s Creative Haven line.) It does have some line art on the inside of both the front and back cover. The paper is cream color and is similar in feel to that of the Creative Haven line.

I have had some difficulties in removing pages from the new Escapes line. While the pages are perforated, they seem to have a tendency to rip into the design about midway down the page. I think it may have something to do with the horizontal format with the page being wider than it is long. After slightly tearing a couple of pages as I tried to remove them, I put a chipboard under the page and scored over the perforations with a box cutter (though a knife or scissor would have worked as well.) Once I did that, I could easily remove the page from the book without tearing it.

For my first project, I used my Tombows and really saw the design upside down as waves crashing into a rocky shore with the sun shining about. If you see this design in the book, it will be flipped.

Here is an overview of what I found in this coloring book:

55 Abstract Mosaic designs
Printed on one side of cream color paper
Paper is perforated and has a slight roughness to to the touch
Book is presented horizontally
Designs merge past the perforations but nothing of importance is lost when removing a page from the book
Glue Bound
Alcohol and water based markers bleed through the page (though water based spotted more than a complete bleed through)
Gel pens and India ink pens left shadows of color on the back of the page
Coloring pencils worked well with this paper. I found that wax-based pencils blended with a deeper color but oil-based pencils provided a deeper coverage with less effort. Hard lead pencils left dents on the back of the page.

I recommend either using a blotter page below your working page or removing the design from the book to color. This will keep the rest of your book safe from seeping ink and dents. I chose to remove pages because I found that this new format book doesn’t work well with my clipboard.