Colour, Colour and More Colour

I've treated myself to a few colouring books, yay! I can't wait for them to arrive so I can get colouring.

Of course, you can't do colouring in without something to colour with. I had a few random pens and pencils left over from my school and uni days (many moons ago) but not a lot and most of the pens are on their last legs. So I bought some pens:

I also bought a pack of coloured pencils. Each pencil has "the spectrum sings" written on the side, which is rather nice.

Oh, and I got a pack of crayons too just because they were cheap and I haven't used crayons in sooooo long I thought they'd be fun to try.

So much yummy colour to play with!

A Pompom A Day

Following on from my 2012 project to knit a sky blanket (inspired by this awesome sky scarf project) I've decided to pompom the sky - making one pompom a day for (almost) a year to record the weather and create a fluffy record of a year in my life.

Here are (most of) the pompoms from the first month:

 

The colours of each pompom are based on how the sky looked at midday that day.

I'm using the same yarn that I used for the sky blanket, but instead of knitting with two strands of yarn I'm making pompoms with six strands... so there are lots of possible colour combinations!

Because of the different colour combos, I need to keep track of which pompom is from which day...

... so I'm tying a little paper "tag" (a small bit of paper with a hole punched in it and the date written on it) to each pompom.

I'm keeping my day-to-day list of colours as a back-up in case one of the tags falls off, but the tags should make it nice and easy for me to put the pompoms in order when I reach stage two of the project. 

In the meantime, the pompoms are proving lots of fun to make and I think they look rather wonderful together!

A Cross Stitch Rose: In Progress

The cross stitch rose I'm stitching is progressing nicely. Here are a couple of pics of how it looks at the moment:

Like the pattern I'm using? It's one of the designs from Eline Pellinkhof's lovely book Stitch & Sew Home.

I've stitched most of the design now, I just need to finish the butterfly and finish filling in the background. In her version, Eline uses the darkest green of the leaves to also stitch the body of the butterfly... but the shade I've used isn't going to work for this so I need to pick an extra colour. I've been umming and aaahing about what colour to use, so in the meantime, I'm slowly filling in the background with white stitches.

I've decided to display the design framed in a 6 inch embroidery hoop. This cuts off a little bit of the design but I think it looks nice having the frame filled with colour.

Looking at these photos though, I totally should have thought to extend the leaves a little bit to better fit the circular space (the straight edge at the bottom looks especially out of place). Maybe I'll unpick a bit of the white and add a few extra green stitches? Hmm...

Awesome Colouring Books for Grown-Ups

Last month I read an interesting article about how "anti-stress" colouring books are really popular in France... which led to a great discussion on Facebook about the joys of colouring in, and some recommendations for great colouring books (thanks to everyone who made suggestions!)

I then totally fell down a rabbit hole of searching for cool looking colouring books to add to my wish lists. Here's a selection of some of the awesome-looking colouring books I found...

(The Amazon & Book Depository links in this post are affiliate links - click on the text links to find the titles in the UK and the images to find them on Amazon USA, where available)

I was pleased to find that some of the range of French anti-stress colouring books mentioned in the article are available from Amazon in the UK, including 100 Nouveaux Coloriages Anti-Stress, Art-thérapie Psychédélique, Art-thérapie Jardins Extraordinaires and Art-thérapie Art Médiéval.

Their range also includes "mystery" colouring books where you colour by numbers and a picture appears...

... and a series called Coloriage XXL which aren't colouring books at all but large posters that you can hang on the wall once you've coloured them in. I especially love this Mayan design.

Another French publisher also sells a range of colouring books with different "inspirations", like this pretty, vintage-inspired book:

Some of the French anti-stress titles also seem to have been reprinted in English and there are a few UK titles that are specifically being sold as books to help you de-stress, like this Art Therapy Colouring Book...

... but it seems that here in the UK we've not really caught on to the magical powers of colouring in!

However, there are some colouring books aimed at adults (this is, of course, very different to "adult" colouring books!!), like the Creative Colouring for Grown-Ups range which includes The Gorgeous Colouring Book for Grown-Ups, Beautiful Patterns and Vintage Patterns. 

Tattoos seem to be a popular colouring book theme, with The Tattoo Colouring Book, Creative Colouring for Grown-Ups: Tattoo Designs, the French Inspiration Tattoos and more to choose from.  I am way too indecisive (and cowardly!) to ever get a tattoo of my own, but colouring them in could be a lot of fun. 

If you prefer your colouring to be on the pretty side, there's Johanna Basford's Secret Garden (this is apparently best to colour with coloured pencils as the paper is very absorbant).

When we were chatting about colouring books on Facebook, a couple of people mentioned this amazing embroidery project where a very talented lady is stitching one of the detailed floral designs from this book (wow!).

The Pattern & Design Coloring Book also looks very pretty...

... and you can never go wrong with loveliness by Charley Harper!

Lots of people recommended Dover Books' range of colouring books. They have a great selection of different titles, themed around history, art, nature and design. I especially like the look of Kaleidoscopic Design and Celtic Design. 

Usborne also have an educational range of colouring books, including Butterflies to Colour and Flowers to Colour. These seem to have coloured illustrations with facts about the flowers, etc, featured and then black and white images for you to colour. These are totally aimed at kids but who cares!

I love the look of their pattern-themed books - you can colour Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Medieval, Mexican and Egyptian patterns, and more.

For colouring books with no educational value whatsoever, just fun, there's the Colour Me Good range of pop culture inspired colouring books which cover topics like horror movies, record sleeves, the 90s and Benedict Cumberbatch.

 

Team Art on Etsy also has colouring books with themes like funny ladies, hunky dudes, 90s pop divas, Game of Thrones and Parks & Rec.

There are lots of quirky colouring books and zines to be found on Etsy... some more "grown-up" than others.

I have fallen in love with this one by Cordial Kitten: Animals with Jobs - there's a giraffe sailing a boat! a cat having a nap instead of delivering the mail! and a fox selling black market bits and bobs out of his coat! Completely adorable.  

 

Finally, I found a range of fancy-looking colouring books specifically designed for artists. Each book apparently contains 16 pages of "superior acid-free drawing paper" printed with very light lines, so you can use pencils, pastels, felt tips, water colours, etc to colour the designs and the original outlines will hardly show. These look rather beautiful, don't you think? Titles include: Art Nouveau, Arabian Patterns, 1960s, Japanese Designs and Turkish Designs.

I say "finally" because I've reached the end of my post, but there are waaaaaay more awesome colouring books out there. If you've got a colouring book to recommend or you've bought one of the books I've mentioned, please do leave a comment! :)