32 Holiday/Christmas Designs by a variety of Design Original Artists printed one side of page

Deck the Halls Holiday Coloring Book

By: Thaneeya McArdle

Rating: 5 of 5

Deck the Halls is the one of the two holiday coloring books by Designs Originals this year. The other book is called Merry and Bright Both books are collections from a variety of artists who publish books from Designs Originals. The designs are fun and festive and have a focus mostly on Christmas but there are a few that are holiday season generic. The designs range from chalk-style (with black backgrounds) to detailed and intricate to the fun and funky designs of Thaneeya McArdle.

While the designs in the book seem to have been included in prior or future publications from the single artists, it appears that there are no duplications between the two collaborative books. Something different about these books are that there are no full size color sample pages though the back inside cover has nine small colored samples. I think this helps keep the book so affordable.

While I own a number of the books that these are pulled from, a huge plus for me is that this book contains the full size version of some of the pages which are provided in medium size in the original books. I really dislike the smaller design pages and am happy to get these designs in a more easy to color size in this book. It has actually convinced me to buy at least one other book as I won’t be missing out on larger designs since they are included in these two.

The artists in Deck the Halls include: Thaneeya McArdle, Robin Pickens, Angelea Van Dam, Valerie McKeehan and Jenny Newland.

This is what I experienced while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring medium. In the comments section below, I will list the coloring medium I use for testing and coloring.

32 Full Size Christmas/Holiday Designs from a variety of artists

Printed one side of the page back of page has journal lines and a quote

Paper is medium weight, white (though some are printed with black background), slightly rough and perforated

Glue Binding

Designs stop well before the perforations

Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through the page

Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows on the back of the page and can spot through as well depending on how heavily they are applied.

Colored pencils work well with the paper. Both oil and wax based pencils provide good color, layer the same or multiple colors well, and blend easily using a blending stick. Hard lead pencils can dent through the page.

I like to use a blotter page below my working page to keep seeping ink and dents from marring the pages below. I use card stock but two sheets of heavyweight paper work well, too. You can also simply remove pages before coloring to keep the rest of the book in good condition as well.