Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice Coloring Book illustrated by Julianne St. Clair

The Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice Coloring Book is wonderful, even the cat loves it!







The book has two features that really set it apart from any other coloring book: perforated pages (perfect for hanging up your art or sharing coloring time with others) and a wide variety of types of pictures to color. For example, there's word heavy pages that feature Bible verses, famous quotes, and fall themed word pages that require little more than filling in words and filling in a small border. My favorite of these even rolls over two pages and has a vertical orientation--two unique features all on one spread! Others have sprawling landscapes: a barn with a fence and trees, a river running through the forest with a mountain/sun in the background (two very similar pages, my only complaint), and pumpkins and apples at orchards. Indoor scenes such as books with hot cider, a fire place with a mantel decorated in pumpkins, and a door wreath. There are more abstract arrangements of leaves and mushrooms into a heart shape, intricate designs inside a giant leaf, and berries and blooms. There are a few animals featured including birds and owls, as well as one close up deer head. 

This coloring book also has a to and from page at the beginning, ideal for a thoughtful gift. The cover has some nice metallic green shine that make it look fancy enough to give as a gift, too. However, I think the truly special thing about this book is that with the perforated pages, you can color with family and friends, so it's really a gift to all!

Get your oranges, browns, and all of your dark yellows and reds ready--this book is all fall!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher, but was not required to post a positive review.

"Picturing Heaven: 40 hope-filled devotions with coloring pages" written by Randy Alcorn and illustrated by Lizzie Preston

Picturing Heaven contains 40 hope-filled devotions with coloring pages, written by Randy Alcorn
and illustrated by Lizzie Preston.

Each devotion features a particular theme. On the left page of the spread, one or two Bible verses are followed by a paragraph of discussion. The right pages is a full-page illustration to color related to the devotion topic.

This book features a table of contents so you can seek a particular theme, or go through the devotions in order. The introduction explains the book's purpose, to develop a view of the New Earth God is preparing for us. The book is intended to serves as both a creative expression and a spiritual inspiration. In line with both of those goals, there is also a blank page provided for sketches at the end as well as a lined page for notes.

An example of a devotional is "Earth's present beauty: Just a hint of what's to come," which starts by quoting Isaiah 6:3, about the earth being filled with his glory. The devotional discussing is quite beautiful: "When we see a roaring waterfall, beautiful flowers, a wild animal in its native habitat, or the joy in the eyes of our pets when they see us, we sense that this world is--or at least was meant to be--our home. If we want to know what the ultimate Heaven and our eternal home will be like, the best place to start is by looking around us" (40). The accompanying picture is of waterfalls and intricately patterned mountain cliffs. It's actually a little hard to tell what it is without the context of the devotional and prior to color being on the page.

The coloring pages are ideal for those who love to color intricate patterns. Every image is made up a smaller shapes to color in. For example, even images of animals like elephants that are realistically much the same color are broken up into little areas to color. This allows for more imaginative color pairings and time to reflect upon the devotion as you color repetitive patterns. Every page also has some parts already colored in with a yellow-gold color. I'm not really sure why that was done this way, and I'm not a huge fan of it. The printed color stands out among colored pencils or markers as being unnatural.




However, the cover of the book features a gold foil filling in some of the images, along with printed colors fading to black and white illustrations. It is beautifully done and a very attractive cover. The book is also a nice square size, giving ample room for the illustrations.




My favorite pages are the ones with animals on them, as that it what I prefer to color. The devotions vary somewhat in terms of quality, but most are quite good. I see this book as a successful coloring devotional, but the stand alone parts aren't spectacular. This book offers a lot of opportunity for quiet reflection. I could see accompanying it with prayer as well.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher but was not required to post a positive review.

"Gratitude: A Prayer and Praise Coloring Journal"

 He will cover you with his feathers.

He will shelter you with his wings.

His faithful promises are your armor and protection.

PSALM 91:4 

Gratitude: A Prayer and Praise Coloring Journal is a hardcover journal that opens flat to easily color and write on both sides without having to worry about pictures in the crease. Each two page spread has its own topic with related pictures to color, a journaling activity, and sometimes a prayer and Bible verse.

The prayers were well written and connected well to the Bible verses. Coloring each spread gave me time to reflect on the theme and think about what I might want to write in reflection. The amount of coloring on the pages varies quite a bit, so it's nice for when you want a quick devotion time or a more detailed coloring experience.

I wish that there was a table of contents listing the topics since each page is titled. It would help if you were looking for some specific comfort. Personally, I chose to jump around to pages that I wanted to color as a way to select what to do next. 

The overall message is positive and encouraging. I found doing the activities both relaxing and reinvigorating. It's a well put together book and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a new type of devotion to try out.

 FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

Review: "Wonderland: A Coloring Book Inspired by Alice's Adventures" by Amily Shen

Wonderland: A Coloring Book Inspired by Alice's Adventures is more than just pages to color: there's also activities and a story. The papers is nice and thick, so no need to worry about markers bleeding through the double sided pages.

The book is divided into 9 sections, each beginning with a "title page" and a few paragraphs of story. The following 4-6 pages are beautiful designs related to the story just presented. For this reason, this coloring book is unusual in that you may want to go through the coloring pages in order, to fully experience the story.





There are several activities spread throughout, such as a maze, hidden pictures, and suggesting that you add your own drawings to specific pages. You also get to solve the mystery of who ate the Queen of Hearts' cakes. I wasn't interested in the activity parts of the book, but they are not overdone or obtrusive if you're only interested in coloring.



Some of the illustrations are single pages, while others run both sides. While it's nice to have a large and complex scene to color, this book has a lot of designs that are in the fold, making it extremely difficult and testing for the perfectionist in me that doesn't want any white showing in the middle where the pencils can't reach!

Other features of note are a to/from dedication page and the removable dust jacket that you can color the inside of for an extra long coloring experience.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review: "Cats in Paris: A Magical Coloring Book" by Won-Sun Jang

Cats in Paris: A Magical Coloring Book is an eclectic collection of drawings. The first 12 pages are the Paris pages. Though they're my favorite coloring pages in the book, they are ruined for me by having a silly line of text on the page: "Let's take a rest by the Eiffel Tower." Just let the cat be next to the Eiffel Tower - it doesn't require commentary. The cat also visits Shakespeare & Company, Notre-Dame, and Monmarte. That is actually all that has to do with Paris in the book.

There's a lot of pages, like the one above, where the cats are layered with flowers or other designs. It is an interesting concept, but I thought there were too many uses of the technique. I didn't find it particularly enjoyable to have to think about what I wanted to be the "top" layer of color. Sometimes the cats are roughly drawn - the lines don't all connect to provide an enclosed place to color. That didn't bother me too much, but I preferred the cats that had completed lines.

The coloring pages are double-sided, but the paper is good quality and even heavy marker use didn't bleed through to the other side. The drawings often cover the entire spread for 2 full pages of coloring a particular pattern. However, especially in this full-spread designs, the images almost always run through the gutter, making the inside half-inch of the book un-colorable, which is a huge pet peeve of mine. It makes the drawings look unfinished.

The last 14 pages were very disappointing. There are 6 pages of cat postal stamps that really don't appeal to me at all. That's followed up with 4 pages of hipster cats wearing glasses and bowties - also just not good looking cats that you'd want to color. The second to last spread is just paw prints all over both pages. There was a similar pages earlier in the book that also included a cat, so this felt like an overly simplified repeat. I probably won't bother coloring any of those.

Overall, I'd say I'm interested in coloring about half of these cats. Do not get this book if you are really looking forward to coloring Paris, as that's not even an eighth of the content. If overlapping cats and flowers/designs seems appealing to you, you'd probably enjoy most of this book.

The cover of the book is beautiful, but horribly misleading. If all pages were of similar quality, this would be a fantastic coloring book.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.  The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.

Review: "Whatever is Lovely: A Coloring Book for Relection and Worship"

The Whatever is Lovely coloring book contains 45 one-sided illustrations. The pages are large and square, a nice size for full-page drawings. The designs take up the whole page, but there are often large white spaces featuring a Bible verse or a religious quote. The overall effect is that even the most intricate designs aren't too intimidating because it's not just the entire page filled with tiny lines.

On the reverse side of the illustration, there is a short description of the meaning, whether it be a more extended version of the Bible verse, lyrics from a song, or explanation from a blog post. The illustrators did a nice job of representing the meaning or theme in their art work. Here are a few of my favorite texts that appear as part of the coloring page:

• Serve one another in love (Galatians 5:13)
• Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. (Corrie Ten Boom)
• I am with you always (Matthew 28:20)
• May we be sensitirve to the ways our words land in the hearts of others (Emily P. Freeman)
• So be truly glad there is wonderful joy ahead (1 Peter 1:6)
• We can put God first by giving him our first moments of the day (Lysa Terkeurst)
• He has made everything beautiful in its time (Ecclesiatstes 3:11)

There is a wide variety within the images themselves as well, from flowers and leaves, to an elephant, a deer, an eagle, and more. Coloring the pages is not only soothing, but also provides quiet time to reflect on the verse or quote provided. Whatever is Lovely was a brilliant idea for a relection/worship coloring book and this book really saw the idea through to a beautiful outcome.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review. The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.

Review: "The Time Chamber" by Daria Song

"Whatever the fairy touched, no matter how mundane, turned into something beautiful and mysterious."

The Time Chamber by Daria Song is an intricate coloring book for adults and young adults. Unlike other popular coloring books, this one has a story line with a sentence or two on a few pages throughout the book. It tells the tale of a young fairy who lives inside a cuckoo clock and decides to venture outside to experience the wonders of the human world. The story didn't add much to the experience for me, but I could appreciate its uniqueness and imagine a pre-teen really enjoying it.


The illustrations are full of tiny details to explore and color, though it's also not too overwhelming. Many coloring pages have the fairy on them. Some of my favorites included a vanishing library and a chandelier room. There are also two visual lists of hidden objects that you can identify throughout the book, with a key at the end.

I used color pencils, which worked well even in the small details. The pages are double-sided, so I did try out a marker and pen to check for bleed-through, which wasn't too bad, but some of the images have a lot of open white space where it would be painfully obvious. Many of the illustrations run the spread, which creates a large two-page design, but also unfortunately means that there are illustrations running right through the gutter making them near impossible to color.

All things considered, there's a good variety in detail level and design of the images, so as long as you're on board with the fairy theme, this coloring book is definitely worth checking out. You can even color in the both sides of the removable dust jacket. There's also a to/from page at the beginning - good to remember when you're looking for that last minute gift.

The colorable inside of the removable dust jacket.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.  The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.