This is my third coloring book in Creative Haven’s new Escapes line. Dr. Angela Porter is a designer who is one of my absolute favorites. I always have a lot of fun coloring the beautiful and detailed designs she creates. The designs in this book celebrate flowers and gardens. There are a few other fun elements, such as birds, balloons and even a castle to make coloring all the more fun.
I have a number of her books by other publishers and two in the Creative Haven line. I found that “Joyful Gardens” while detailed, is definitely less so than some of her more recent “Entangled” books. I like the change as I am able to use broader tip medium with some of the designs in this book. The garden designs are still detailed but do not contain as many intricate and tiny elements.
The Escapes 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. While Dover calls the paper ivory, I found that it is closer to cream color and is similar in feel to that of the Creative Haven line.
With my previous books in this line, I found that while the pages are perforated, I found them a tad more difficult to remove without tearing them. I think it may have to do with the width of the book being longer. 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. So far, with this book, I am keeping the pages intact.
This is what I experienced while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring medium:
55 Detailed Garden/Flower Designs
Printed on one side of cream/ivory color paper
Paper is perforated and has a slightly smooth to to the touch
Book and designs are presented horizontal
Designs stop before the perforations
Designs have a framing line or a designed frame around the outer edge so elements are finished with no unfinished edges
Glue Bound
Alcohol-based markers bleed rapidly through the paper
Water based markers bleed through the paper in spots
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. I was able to layer both easily. Hard lead pencils left dents on the back of the page.
I am using a blotter page of card stock or heavyweight paper below my working page. That will help stop ink and dents from marring the page below. You can also simply remove pages before coloring.
This is my third coloring book in Creative Haven’s new Escapes line. Dr. Angela Porter is a designer who is one of my absolute favorites. I always have a lot of fun coloring the beautiful and detailed designs she creates. The designs in this book celebrate flowers and gardens. There are a few other fun elements, such as birds, balloons and even a castle to make coloring all the more fun.