Color my whiskers

The time has come to present you second coloring book I grabbed. This time, it’s not a review copy, but it was bought online, so I didn’t know exactly what I’m going to get. But after this little review – you will.

I should probably warn you – I will experiment a little with the format of the coloring books reviews because I feel like I should remember to mention certain things, like paper quality, size, etc, but I still haven’t found the best way to do so.

Cats: 70 Designs to Help You De-Stress
Author: Hamlyn

Goodreads | Amazon US

Overall rating: 

The size

8.4 x 8.4 inches, or in more understandable system: 21 x 21 cm

As you can see it’s not a big book. It is good to carry it with you though, so I guess it has its advantages. But since I’m doing all my coloring at home I do appreciate big books, especially when the designs are very detailed and most of these are, but more about this later.

The page count

The book has 72 pages and each of them has a new, lovely design on it. But as it is with most of the coloring books, each page is printed from both sides, so if you’re thinking about framing your finished work you will have to choose which of the two images are more worthy.

The cover

The book is oriented vertically, so the cover opens upwards rather than to the side. I count it as a plus, since with most of the designs you might work around not coloring to the very top of the image, but the sides are what you want to color and having the binding on the side usually makes it a bit harder. So, good job with this part! As for the cover itself – no images printed on the inside, which is good. And the back cover is a thick piece of cardboard that creates an extra coloring pad, so if you want to, you can color pretty much everywhere. Unfortunately, the front cover isn’t like that, so for the half of the images, you still need a desk.

The paper

Clear white color, structurally good enough for color pencils, but I wouldn’t use other “wetter” media. I tried it with marker and it’s not a good idea since the colors go through the paper to the other side and the other image. The thing is, these images would actually be perfect to color with some thin markers because they are rather detailed. The color pencils need to be very sharp to color inside the lines.

The binding

To keep it all together, the publisher decided to use glue. As much as I don’t mind it with some books, I don’t think it works well with this one. But I guess other types of binding wouldn’t work here anyway, so it’s fine as it is.

The designs

Lovely :). At first, I was kind of worried with the lack of clear borders because all you get are intricate designs put in various cat-like shapes, but it actually gives you free choice to do what you want. If you have a need for a border – you can add them yourself. If not, let them be as they are now.

As I mentioned before the images are very detailed, so you need a sharp pencil to color it, but it’s worth it! You can create a really lovely image that will look fantastic framed and hanged on your wall. Here’s a little gallery to show you what I mean.

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To sum it up

Size ★★☆☆☆
Page count ★★★☆☆
Cover ★★★★☆
Paper ★★★☆☆
Binding ★★★☆☆
Designs ★★★★★