Colour Me Calm: Mandalas, Elizabeth James
An okay book of around thirty mandalas to colour, printed on one side of the page only. The paper seems good enough quality — my markers aren’t bleeding through onto the next design, though they do bleed through the page a little — and there’s a nice range of fiddly bits and larger areas to colour, with some extremely detailed mandalas among the more simple ones. It’s not bad for the price, which was only a couple of pounds.
My only issue is that I immediately recognised the fifth to last mandala from another colouring book, the Creative Colouring for Grown-Ups book of mandalas. On a bit of checking up, it’s possible they both got the image from Shuttershock innocently, since both credit Shutterstock at the front, but it does make me wonder a little about where exactly the mandalas were gathered from and if due credit was given… in either of the two books, since both came out in 2015.
So, a lesson, I guess — if you design mandalas, check yours hasn’t made it into one of these books.
Rating: 3/5
I hate it when markers blend through the pages. The mandela on the cover looks nice, though.
Luckily, in this book, each design has a blank back, so it’s not really affecting anything when the markers do bleed a bit.
I have a few coloring books that have the same images in them, too, and I wondered the same thing about the credit.
Kelly recently posted…Waiting on Wednesday: The Museum of Heartbreak by Meg Leder
Yeah, it is a bit… weird.
That’s really bizarre that they would have taken a design another book has already used. I suppose it’d make sense if it was designated free use for all on Shutterstock, but in that case, why wouldn’t someone just download it free themselves too? Anyway, I don’t know if I can color a whole book of just mandalas, as pretty as they are. I need some variation too!
Mogsy @ BiblioSanctum recently posted…Waiting on Wednesday 02/17/16
Yeah, exactly…
I have a whole bunch of colouring books, so I alternate!