62 Christmas Designs and 16 Recipes printed one side of the page

Southern Living Christmas at Home: A Lifestyle Coloring Book

By: The Editors of Southern Living

Rating: 5 of 5

I have bought the Southern Living Christmas holiday guides for years. I always love to look at the beautiful decorations and get inspired for new looks at my home and with my trees (inside and outside.) When I saw that Southern Living had a Christmas coloring book, I was hoping that it would be similar to the guides.

Great news is that it is. In fact, on the inside of the front and back cover, there are some photos of the real decorated rooms which inspired some of the designs in the book. The designs range from fun to elegant and cover a wide variety of design concepts.
There are 62 designs in the book and they portray everything from Christmas trees to fireplaces to table settings to wreathes. I especially like designs which are food related as those have recipes on the back of the page. I like that as the pages are perforated and if you remove pages, the recipe will stay with the design.
The only slight drawback about the book is the thin paper. It is thin enough that it shows through shadows of the designs on the next page. If I could do so, I would drop my rating to 4.5 for this issue but instead, I rounded up (as I always do) to a 5 star rating. Otherwise, the book has exceeded my expectations and I am very happy with it.
Here is what I found while coloring in the book and testing my coloring medium on the pages:
62 Decorative Christmas designs plus 16 recipes
Printed on one side of the page (though recipes are printed on the back of the food design pages)
Paper is very thin, white, somewhat smooth and perforated.
Glue bound
Some designs slightly cross over the perforations but nothing essential to the design would be lost if you remove a page from the book.
Alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper rapidly.
Water-based markers bleed through in spots except for the brush end of Tombow dual end markers. Those leave shadows on the back of the page.
India ink pens leave shadows on the back of the page and can bleed through in spots if you apply the ink heavily or in multiple layers.
Gel pens leave colorful shadows on the back of the page. They do not require additional drying time over what is normal for gel pens.
Colored pencils work well as though the paper is somewhat smooth, it still has enough tooth to grab pigment. I tested both oil and wax-based and had good results with both. I was able to lay down good color, layer the same and multiple colors, and blend easily using a pencil style blender. Hard lead pencils can leave dents through the paper.
I either remove pages from the book or use a blotter page of card stock to keep seeping ink and dents from damaging the pages below my working page. A couple of pages of heavyweight paper works well, too.