I have been cutting down on doing product reviews ever since our 3rd kiddo came along in end of Sept 2013. I do still accept review pitches but only when time permits and if it is something that I can see it being useful and beneficial to our family. Also, as busy as I am with 3 kiddos, home cooking, taking care of hubby's administration site of the business and swamped up with managing my FB page and blog, I just can't say no to reviewing good books! Reading is my passion and coupled with books that are of parenting, children, family or religion or educational genre, all the more I gotta say yes!
Title: Extreme Colouring: Amazing World
Author: Beverley Lawson
Publisher: Carlton Books Ltd (5 Nov. 2015)
ISBN: 978-1780977379
Paperback: 96 pages
Description from the product page:
"Extreme Colouring: Amazing World is action-packed with challenging, complex and advanced scenes that will keep any artist entertained for hours. Inviting you to relax and unwind, as well as encouraging and inspiring you to discover your inner artist, this extreme book of high- quality illustrations is like no other adult art book on the market. Taking inspiration from amazing places and locations around the world, this exciting, and expertly designed DIY art book will help you create your own advanced art masterpieces, one splash of colour at a time. With lots of thought-provoking and complex illustrations to inspire your imagination, Extreme Colouring: Amazing World encourages you to live life in glorious colour."
I think I've been living under a cocoon or something as only recently I discovered this crazy colouring phase as I watched friends uploading their colouring results and seeing people asking where to buy certain brands of colour pencils at cheaper price. I absolutely cannot fathom the reasoning behind this colouring mania so when I was offered an opportunity to review a colouring book, I thought 'Should I jump into this bandwagon? I'm not artistically inclined, should I even attempt this?'
I asked around why people do this and was told that it was a therapeutic thing for them, to be able to slow down their life and focus on colouring, bit by bit. Whoaaa... therapeutic?! Sure, I'm in! As a busy mum of 3 kiddos, the last thing I could ever achieve was to slow down my busy life and do something crazy like this. I mean, attempt something crazy like this. I told myself, even if I could just colour 1 page that is a major achievement!
Now, I have to confess, I don't have any special colouring tools. All I am armed with is our kiddos' colouring pencils hahaha...
I like the theme of this book as it covers some famous places all around the world, Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, Eiffel Tower in France and more. At the same thing when I colour the pages in the book, I get to show and teach our kiddos as well. I started colouring, telling myself, no rules here, just take whatever colour my heart desire. I mean, this is art right? Doesn't mean the colour must conform to real life right?
When I started colouring, I do feel it is so tiring as I had to concentrate on the finer details. I asked myself 'What have I gotten myself into?!' I find myself restraining my impatience feeling, to slow down and really focus on colouring one spot at a time. After a few minutes, it gets easier and easier and I do feel more calm and happy seeing the paper coming to life bit by bit.
At some point, my 4-year-old girl was intrigued and decided to doodle on one of the pages in my book. As a young girl, her favourite colour is PINK so whatever she is colouring in the book is ALL PINK. Nevertheless, like I said, no rules. Just colour.
I even sneaked in some colouring time for myself as our kiddos were busy doing their colouring activities during the school holidays. Below is a picture I snapped as we were colouring haha...
And here are some of my completed colouring works... do not laugh at me okay?
The pink coloured fences in the picture below was done by my 4-year-old girl :) Now one thing I must add is I am very happy to notice how this colouring book impact my 4-year-old girl as I discovered one of her colouring work during Sunday school where she coloured the flowers and leaves separately. As in the flowers were pink (of course!) and the leaves were green. All nicely separated instead of her usual style of colouring everything pink. I'm glad to observe this in her!
In summary, it is an eye opening experience for me, I'm glad to review this book, to be able to slow down my busy life and enjoyed the calming moments as I coloured away. The sense of accomplishments as you see the pages being brought to life by your own colouring is amazing!
The book is available at all major bookstores. For international fans, you can find it at Amazon
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I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a copy of the book in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"
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