Off the Bookshelf

Reviews / Votes

This is the first ever colouring book that has made me smile. You really will be cheered up by this book. Colouring by adults and children is having a huge revival. At last adults have realised it isn't just for children and colouring can really add something to your life. By colouring you relax and find meditation with the ease as you colour. All the stresses of the day float away as you spend the time creating something beautiful. With this book you also get fun and something to smile and laugh at. Using different colours you can make the designs even funnier and make more people laugh. I love using the pages I have coloured for many different things. The really special ones are framed & hung or given to friends and family as gifts. With each colouring page you have a blank back

so that the design doesn't get muddied with anything on the back. Not only that each page is perforated where it is attached to the book. This means they are easy to remove from the book. Why not use the designs to decorate a journal or how about a beautiful box. The book is full of many different pictures with many different themes and designs.You have everything from animals to buildings, to shapes.You can either colour the designs yourself or you can give the book as a gift. Why not join it with coloured pencils, pens or felt-tips. If you have a friend or family member that doesn't spend enough relaxing this would really be a brilliant gift. I love the idea of colouring all the pages and leaving it on the coffee table for everyone to smile at and enjoy. Brilliant fun and great for relaxation. * Crochet Addict UK * This book contains over 45 images which are all printed single-sided and are perforated for easy removal for gifting, framing, or even before colouring to make it easier to get to all the areas. The book itself is A4, paperback and glue-bound. The pages are bright white and fairly thick and water-based pens didn't bleed but did shadow, though this doesn't matter as the images are printed on one-side only. The paper is lightly textured meaning it's ideal for using pencils too and you can easily build up a few layers for blending and shading. Because the pages are perforated, you don't have to worry about the borderless images entering the spine so you can colour all the way up to the edges without that horrid unreachable strip down the middle. The images include all things weird, wonderful and wacky, from books shelves to science lab equipment, snowglobes to US landmarks, citrus fruits to flying pigs and owls to postage stamps. It really is a very quirky book that's full to the brim with eccentric, imaginative images. It's almost like you've stepped into a person's imagination and someone has then drawn everything they found there. This means that many of the images have an almost childlike quality to them and because these pictures are hand-drawn there are little quirks with unfinished edges and lines that don't quite join up which gives it a real nostalgic feel as it takes you back to the books you coloured as a child, without being childish. At the back of the book is a page explaining the basics about colour including information on primary, secondary and tertiary colours, blending and shading, and colour schemes that work well including monochromatic and analogous schemes. This is great for the novice colourer to help you get started!



In terms of mental health, this book is pretty good for it! The whimsical nature of the images and the lack of realism in many of them allows you to really free up your creativity and try out outlandish colour schemes and go to town with rainbow colours and mixed media. The line thickness varies throughout from spindly thin to medium thickness but mostly it's medium thickness so you certainly don't need perfect vision or fine motor control to enjoy this book. The level of intricacy and detail also varies throughout but it's not overly intricate and most of the spaces aren't tiny so you can use most colouring mediums to good effect. The images don't need loads of concentration so they're good for bad days when your focus isn't great and you need to zone out and be distracted without having to really pay attention. This book isn't samey and you certainly won't get bored when flicking through it or when colouring because there's always something new to spot. The childlike quality of some of the images and the imaginative content is really heart-warming and is sure to cheer up your mood and make you smile on even the darkest of days.



I would recommend this book to those of you want a less complicated book and those who like to use alcohol markers because the single-sided printing make it ideal for them and the perforations mean you can easily frame your work. The quirky images are sure to make you nostalgic about colouring as a child and will almost certainly put a smile on your face.



https://colouringinthemidstofmadness.wordpress.com/2016/01/08/off-the-bookshelf-coloring-book-a-review/ * Lucy Fyles - Colouring in the Midst of the Madness * I've seen a lot of coloring books, but I think this one has to be the most original and unusual one I've encountered. Instead of swirling florals or intricately patterned animals, this one is filled with an eclectic selection of the strange and unconventional. As it says on the reverse, the drawings suggest stories and get the imagination flowing in the way that most other current coloring offerings just don't. There are more than 45 pages in here filled with dancing jerboas, maps of cities such as New York, hammerhead sharks with hammers for heads, an owl that looks like a man's head with a beard, bookshelves, townscapes, chemical apparatus, robots, shells, snow globes and many more. Pictures are roughly grouped into themes such as maps, books, technical, animals, etc., but none are entirely conventional, a refreshing change! Each page has a perforated edge so you can detach it, a useful option as I can imagine these pictures making great conversation pieces if displayed on the wall. The drawings are printed on bright white heavyweight paper and are one sided so you can use whatever coloring medium you like, although putting a sheet of paper behind if you are using pens or paints is essential. Lines are crisp and vary from very thin to very thick and areas to color range from large to intricate so you can choose depending on how you feel and what you are using. Inside the back cover is a page about color theory showing color wheels, combinations, etc., which is helpful. Overall if you are looking for a quality coloring book that dares to be different, I can't think of a better choice. Top marks for sheer imagination! -- Rachel Hyde - Myshelf.com