Spotlight: Creative Therapy Colouring Book

The lovely people at Michel O’Mara Books are a favourite when it comes to the recent craze of adult colouring books, holding 24 in their list. There’s a style for everyone and they were kind enough to send me one to have a play with:

Illustrators: Hannah Davies, Richard Merritt and Jo Taylor

Edition: A4 hardback

Release Date: 30^th January 2015

This is a gorgeous colouring book – I dove in as soon as I opened the package! I tend to colour in felt pens as I love the intensity of the colour and the ease of them (plus, I tend to get pencil all up the side of my hands as I press so hard!) so the thick, high quality paper and solid covers of this book suit me perfectly. It has this really cool jointed spine which means that it’s super easy to lay flat and colour without damaging the book at all. It’s the perfect thing to have on my lap while I watch a little Netflix in the evenings!

Unlike lots of colouring books around at the moment, this one is actually divided into two sections: colouring and doodling. The first half of the book features a huge chunk of images in varying styles, intricacies and sizes and they’re all gorgeous. Though it’s probably not for everyone, the Creative Therapy Anti-Stress Colouring Book sometimes has filled in backgrounds or small parts of a pattern or image already coloured. I thought this was a really cool way to play with colour; to make that merge seamlessly with your own colouring, it all had to match and fit together which can be harder than it looks when you’re using cheap, kids felt pens! 

I do have to admit that I’m more of a colourer than a doodler so I haven’t actually tried anything from the section half of the book yet. To me, colouring is a mindless activity whereas doodling takes a little more concentration – I’m very particular about things matching and being symmetrical and even so I tend to avoid it when I’m tired or watching TV at the same time. Not all of the doodling designs are ones that I would really bother with, but there are quite a few that catch my attention every time I flick through the book searching for my next mission. Basically, the ones I can fill with geometric and line patterns are my favourites! Here’s a few of the doodling images to give you an idea of what’s in store for you:

Buy the book on Amazon|The Book Depository|Waterstones|Hive

A huge thank you to Michael O’Mara for the review copy!

Sophie