Wendy Piersall is one of those people. Wendy is a talented artist and a fun blogger to follow. Her first coloring book came out in October, Coloring Animal Mandalas
The book was a beautiful success. She has two more books out now, a fourth one that you can preorder!
I enjoy coloring as a nice break from everything; it provides the same stress relief feeling that stitching provides me and it gives my brain a break because I don’t have to count or check a pattern. (Though, while we were coloring Ethan did suggest these mandalas would make cool cross stitch patterns, and I certainly agree with that… we’ll stick a pin in that idea for later.)
A magical thing happened when I got out the colored pencils and sat down at the table on a rainy Saturday evening. Ethan shut off the television. Lucas hooked his iPod up to the soundbar speaker. Noah came out of him room. And we were all coloring together. Next thing we knew it was 2:30 in the morning ~ oops!
They were actually still coloring when I went to bed! and making plans for what to color next, and thinking about how they could design their own coloring books, and talking about getting new markers and colored pencils on our next trip to Michael’s for sketch books and supplies. 🙂
What a lovely story! Great to see kids unplugging and getting in touch with their creative side.
Thanks, Anna! I try to get them to unplug as often as I can. About 6 months ago I actually cancelled all of our cell phone service. It started off as “just a test” but things have been so much more fun since then and everyone is present in their day, so we’ve left them off. To be honest, we hardly even miss them (and that saves us about $260 a month!)
Such a wonderful post. It’s nice to see a family actually enjoying something together for a change instead of each on an iPhone or some such thing.
Personally, when I do my counted cross stitching I find it much like coloring but instead of a book it’s my fabric and instead of colored pencils, pens or crayons, it’s my thread. But I was an avid fan of coloring books as a younger person and then grew into some books that I can’t remember what they were called but they were similar to what you are using now. Wish I’d had some of Wendy’s books back then.
Thank you for sharing these. Might be a great idea for Christmas.
We’re loving the coloring activity this week 🙂 I agree, cross stitching is a lot like coloring, but sometimes I can’t even focus on making the thread go through the holes properly (and I admit I’m terrible at coloring inside the lines LOL) They’re almost out of pages and begging me to go to the bookstore and get more! Barnes and Noble and Michael’s Crafts both have a pretty good selection of “grown up” sorts of coloring books with mandalas, patterns, and all sorts of things. Of course, Amazon has a huge selection too.