31 Christmas designs based on songs

Creative Haven Merry Christmas Designs Coloring Book (Adult Coloring)

By: Suzanne Anoushian

Rating: 5 of 5

The Christmas season is my favorite of the year. I like to do all sorts of crafts and coloring Christmas designs is something I really enjoy. Merry Christmas Designs is by artist Suzanne Anoushian who is new to me. The designs range from Santas to Christmas trees to elves, wreathes, stockings and all sorts of things I think of for the season. Each of the designs also provide information, songs, or even stories that relate to Christmas as well.

I chose to do a design based on glass ornaments as I like to collect a wide variety of ornaments, including vintage glass ones. I had a lot of fun using both markers and gel pens (especially ones with glitter and metallic looks.) I’ll post a photo of my first project as well as samples from the book.

The designs have a sketch-style look to them. Even the words look hand written in very neat penmanship. The designs are detailed though not what I would call intricate to color.

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

31 hand-drawn Christmas inspired designs with lots of Christmas information

Designs are printed one side of the page

Paper is white, medium weight, slightly smooth and has perforated pages.

Glue Binding with perforations so you can remove them one at a time.

The designs stop well before the perforations

Alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper

Water-based markers bleed through with colorful spots and shadows on the back of the page

Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows of color on the back of the page. India ink pens can bleed through when I use more than one layer of color.

Coloring pencils work well with this paper. I was able to use both wax and oil based pencils equally well. I was able to get good color and to get deeper pigment by layering the same color. I found that I could layer multiple colors and blend easily using a pencil style blending stick. Hard lead pencils leave dents on the back of the page.

I generally prefer to use a blotter page under my working page to keep ink from seeping through but you can also remove pages from the book to color. I like card stock for my blotter page but a couple of sheets of heavyweight paper works as well.