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A while ago we talked about crafts you can do with a group, and Offbeat Homie Emma mentioned coloring:
So if you’re open to low-skill based things, coloring is a GREAT way to let your mind wander and chat without having to be too focused. I’m thinking of starting a coloring book club for my neighborhood.
And I was like “mind-fucking-blown.” I’m crappy at every craft ever, but coloring… dudes, I’m awesome at that AND it’s something I can do while I have a glass (bottle?) of wine. And then I stumbled upon this:
Color Me Drunk: A Drinking and Drawing Activity Book. It’s a coloring book that encourages you to drink!? Yes please. Obviously I purchased it right away.
But wait! My adult coloring finds get better. Check these out…
A friend of mine uses that last coloring book to manage her anxiety. Oh the joy of coloring for adults. What coloring books have you gotten into? Bonus points for letting us know what kind of coloring utensils you use (which markers don’t bleed, which pencils don’t break, etc).
Love this! I was very unsocial in college and my insomnia paired with my roommate’s early bed time meant I had a lot of bored quiet time to myself at night. I printed off some mandala designs and started coloring those at night. I only had a few dry erase pens to color with though!
These are awesome! I’m wishlisting some of these for the next time I place an Amazon order cause my friends need these.
I really like the coloring books of Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass windows and Art Nouveau designs. I had an Art Nouveau stained glass coloring book that had translucent pages, so you could color and hang up the pages on windows. Lost that one during my last move!
I personally like coloring with crayons when I’m trying to decompress, since the smell of the crayons evokes lovely memories of not being an adult. Colored pencils are great for detailed pages.
Yes! The Dover coloring books are glorious!
Oh man, the smell of crayons… 🙂
My favorite is the brilliance that is Fat Ladies in Spaaaaace
WHAT!? It’s so good, I’m adding that to the freaking post!
My mother suggested Mandala coloring for me. She had done it years ago and gave me all of her books and color pencils. I got really into it for awhile, I have never been an artistic person but I liked sorting out which color scheme I was going for in a particular design and methodically coloring each section. My husband took it up too. My mother liked to use Prismacolor color pencils, they have a nice rich color they are a little pricey but since I inherited a bunch it was easier to then purchase the random pencil in a color I didn’t have.
Ditto on the Prismacolor pencils. They’re a little more expensive than, say, Crayola but so much nicer to work with. I really enjoy the mandala and dia de los muertos books to color in.
Also, Michaels craft store has a lot of coloring books and you can use their 40% coupon on them (the coupon’s fine print says it excludes books, but apparently coloring books are different). Michaels pretty much always has a 40% off coupon available for printing on their website. Click on the weekly ad link.
Prisamcolors are also the best pencils for blending.
One of the sweet things about Michaels is it’s one of the few (in my experience) companies that seems to accept coupons directly on your smartphone! I always forget to get the coupon(s) before, so I just pull em up on my phone as I’m going through the checkout.
* I’m in Canada, though, so I don’t know for sure if the policy is the same in the US. Anyone know?
Yup! US stores (near me, anyway) accept them too. Jo Ann Fabrics is the same, provided that you’re using one from them directly and not from one of those coupon sites.
How do yo know michaels can use the coupon on colouring books. They didn’t let me when I went this weekend.
Bummer. 🙁 I’ve used coupons for coloring books twice at Michaels. It’s been about 6 months, so maybe they changed the policy? I wonder if you bring in a competitor’s coupon (like Joann’s) they would give you the discount with that one? I know I’ve used Joann’s coupons there before, too.
When I lost my job last year I bought Bun B’s Rapper Coloring and Activity Book to de-stress. I love it!
Whelp, I just made my birthday wish list. I suck at art, but I’m down with coloring while drinking wine.
These are fantastic! I’ve been giggling over / planning to buy the Colour Me Good Ryan Gosling book for a while now – my sister looooves him.
Johannah Basford’s colouring books are freaking *gorgeous* as well.
I just bought a Mad Men colouring book to console a friend about the show ending – https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/127166227/mad-men-a-colouring-book-5-x-7-in
I really like the 1000 Connect-the-Dot series. They have cities, icons, etc. You need good vision though; because there are so many dots the numbers are tiny: 1000 Dot-to-Dot: Cities
I just came to suggest this. I like them too! It’s kind of relaxing even though the basis is pretty simple, with that many numbers you actually can’t tell what the image is beforehand unless you cheat and look in the back. It’s nice revealing it over time.
I bought that for my landscape architect husband… but I think I’m having way more fun with it than he is!
Don’t forget the wonderful Color Your Own “X” Paintings from Dover Art ! I love the Gauguin and Degas books but there are so many !!!
http://store.doverpublications.com/by-subject-coloring-books-fine-art-coloring-books.html
I’ve been colouring in “Creative Colouring For Grown-Ups: Glorious Gardens” lately. So many pretty gardens in all sorts of styles from art nouveau-y to realistic to cartoony. I have a twelve-colour pack of Derwent Coloursoft pencils. I’d like more colours, but they are horrifically expensive. I also bought some markers but they bleed through the page like there’s no tomorrow.
Looks like I have a few things to get for the adult Easter baskets this year.
Oh good idea!
My awesome partner made me a coloring book for my birthday a while back. He does not consider himself an artist so each page he made apparently took hours. He also got contributions from some artist friends and downloaded some filler line drawings from the internet. It is extremely soothing to work in and makes me super happy
I just got Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest & Coloring Book, and it is awesome!
For my last birthday my friend gave me a constellations coloring book with a hand made dust jacket to disguise it as a research notebook (I’m an astronomy grad student). I color in it when I need to take a break from computer screens or when I’m waiting for programs to finish running.
I like the “Not in need of rescue: women in fantasy” coloring book: which is full of highly capable fantasy women in clothing that isn’t chainmail bikinis; it is kid-friendly as well.
And the site PrintMandala.com has a ton of cool free mandalas to print and color, which is super soothing.
Oh, and there is an “anti-stress coloring book” series, that isn’t out in the U.S. yet (amazon has it for pre-order) but is out in the UK.
“THIS!” to the Art Therapy anti-stress colouring book! As Jane notes, it’s available in the UK and a US edition is coming soon. The designs are very detailed, including lots of repeating shapes, which I find relaxing to colour because they take a little focus. This book is currently getting me through the final stages of PhD writing!
I felt so silly when I saw those beautiful books and thought they had a point. And then I started talking to people and learnt that it was actually a thing. I proudly bought an Art Deco – Art Nouveu book.
I’ve only just started coloring it, but I really like it. Interestingly, I felt a bit stuck in the beginning because I was somehow afraid of getting the colors wrong, or ruining a beautiful drawing with a poor choice of colors. It was liberating to be able to complete a drawing. Casually, and beautifully.
These are awesome! However, I can’t really do coloring books because I inevitably go outside the lines, thinking something like “books can’t tell ME where to draw!” and it ends up just looking ugly. Haha, oh well.
I need all of these! So bookmarking this page for future purchases. I have a classic Japanese scene adult colouring book which I absolutely love, but would love some more silly crazy ones too. Adult colouring is the BEST, yo. Especially when you do it in a blanket fort.
Probably my favorite coloring books I’ve seen are the ones full of vaginas. The “Cunt Coloring Book” is just fabulous (but also somewhat terrifying).
The Big Coloring Book of Vaginas
Grown up coloring books are outselling cookbooks in France (NOT an April Fools joke 🙂 ). http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4398423.ece
Ha! This was on NPR yesterday. I wonder where their story idea came from…..
http://www.npr.org/2015/04/01/396634471/artist-goes-outside-the-lines-with-coloring-books-for-grown-ups
No fucking WAY! They asked their Facebook followers about adult coloring books 3 days after I wrote this post!? Oh hell yeah… I’m officially a taste-maker. 😉
I have this one
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/secret-garden-an-inky-treasure/9781780671062-item.html?ikwid=garden+colouring+book&ikwsec=Home&ikwidx=1
The Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Colouring Book
Prismacolour pencil crayons or Crayola fine tip markers are awesome
I loved coloring the Altair Designs coloring book I had as a kid. My mom got me an adult coloring book for Mother’s Day this year. ^_^