20 Lovely winter inspired postcard designs postcards printed on heavy weight postcard stock

By: Hanna Karlzon

Rating: 5 of 5

Winter Dreams is my first coloring book by Hanna Karlzon. The book was originally published in Sweden and has now been published in the US. I enjoy seasonal designs, especially those for fall and winter. I lived most of my life in Southern California and did not get to experience a true winter season. Hobbies and crafts such as coloring were my only way of enjoying the idea of snow and winter scenes.

While Winter Dreams is not a Christmas coloring postcard set, there are some designs that evoke the holiday (ornaments and a gingerbread house.) The designs have a lush and ornamental feeling to them. There are some doodle elements but they don’t overwhelm the designs.

Many postcards are sized down designs which are intricate and hard to color. That is not true of this book. It appears that the designs were hand-drawn to this particular scale. The designs are detailed but not intricate. I was able to use my standard coloring medium without having to resort to special small nib pens or ultra sharp hard lead pencils.

This is what I experienced while coloring these postcards and testing the paper with my coloring medium.

20 Winter inspired postcard designs with mailing areas defined on the back of the card

Printed on one side of the card

Paper is heavyweight card stock in smooth ivory

Glue bound but in the style of easy to remove pages such as a notepad

Alcohol-based markers left colorful shadows on the back of the page and had the tiniest bit of spot through. I would put a blotter page of paper under my working page or remove the card from the book to color to keep the designs below safe from the slight possibility of seeping ink

Water-based markers, India ink, and gel pens did not bleed through the card. Gel pens took a little longer to dry than usual.

Colored pencils worked well with this paper. Oil and wax-based pencils worked well with good color, layering, and blending using a pencil style blending stick.