{"id":3815,"date":"2015-07-25T12:52:27","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T16:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/?p=3815"},"modified":"2016-01-21T13:22:31","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T18:22:31","slug":"coloring-for-grown-ups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/coloring-for-grown-ups\/","title":{"rendered":"Coloring for Grown Ups"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may have heard about the new craze: adult coloring and adult coloring books! I have to say that when I was a child, I LOVED to color. So I was very excited to see more complex and detailed books being published and targeted towards grownups.<\/p>\n

Back in March, I ordered Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest & Coloring Book<\/a> and had to wait nearly a month for it to come back in stock. My copy finally arrived in April. I’ve been slowly but surely working on pages since. Mostly at night after Love goes to bed, I sit down with my Prismacolor colored pencils<\/a> and use it as a way to wind down from the day.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

I thought I’d show off some of my completed pages; a mini gallery of colored pages to help inspire your own creativity!<\/p>\n

The first page I colored was a squirrel. I hadn’t colored with any detail for years so I was a bit rusty.
\n

\"Squirrel<\/a>
Squirrel colored page from the Enchanted Forest Coloring Book<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Next I colored the “crow” bird. I got a little more adventurous with this page. I figured it’s an “Enchanted” forest so why not let it be more fantasy?
\n

\"Colored<\/a>
Colored “crow” bird page from Enchanted Forest Coloring Book<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Third, I did the hedgehog.
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\"Hedgehog<\/a>
Hedgehog colored page from the Enchanted Forest Coloring Book<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Fourth came the castle on a mushroom. This one I got creative with and made half the trees spring and half of them autumn. I even made the grass on the mushroom reflect this color scheme.
\n

\"Completed<\/a>
Completed colored page of castle on a mushroom from the Enchanted Forest Coloring Book<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Fifth, I did the bunny. I went for whimsy with the rabbit, making it colorful and more floral based.
\n

\"Completely<\/a>
Completely coloring page of floral bunny rabbit from the Enchanted Forest Coloring Book<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Sixth came my largest one to date: the leaf sailboat. This one took me a total of three evenings to finish, about a couple hours each evening. I really paid attention to the detail, shading and layering of it.
\n

\"Coloring<\/a>
Coloring in progress shot of the adult coloring book page featuring a leaf sailboat from the Enchanted Forest coloring book.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n
\"Coloring<\/a>
Coloring page in progress of the leaf sailboat page in the Enchanted Forest Coloring Book<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Finished<\/a>
Finished color page of the leaf sailboat from the Enchanted Forest Coloring Book<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As you can see, I’m definitely learning and improving as I go! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Most pictures took a few hours to color, either all at once, or in the case of the sailboat, a few hours a night for three evenings. When I first started, I was using Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils, 48 Assorted Color Pencils<\/a> and later decided to upgrade and get some more colors so I upgraded to the Prismacolor Premier Soft Core Colored Pencils, 72 Colored Pencils<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/center><\/p>\n

A lot of people also like to use things like markers or gel pens. I bought Fiskars Gel Pen 48-Piece Value Set<\/a>for accent and punch of color details but I haven’t used them yet. I want to add some sparkle to the dragonfly page.<\/p>\n

I find it very relaxing and a good way to reduce stress. I’m not alone in this experience! Articles have flooded the internet like this one on Huffington Post<\/a> which says:<\/p>\n

When coloring, we activate different areas of our two cerebral hemispheres, says psychologist Gloria Mart\u00ednez Ayala. “The action involves both logic, by which we color forms, and creativity, when mixing and matching colors. This incorporates the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in vision and fine motor skills. The relaxation that it provides lowers the activity of the amygdala, a basic part of our brain involved in controlling emotion that is affected by stress.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

or even a study from San Francisco State University<\/a> which showed:<\/p>\n

Creative activity was found to have both indirect effects and direct effects on performance-related outcomes…The results indicate that organizations may benefit from encouraging employees to consider creative activities in their efforts to recover from work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, coloring is not just for kids anymore! \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

In addition to Enchanted Forest, there are so many other options!! I have also recently picked up Creative Haven Creative Cats Coloring Book<\/a> and Creative Haven Entangled Coloring Book<\/a>. (I haven’t started those yet though!)<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>
My coloring books and colored pencils.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So have you<\/em> rediscovered coloring yet? Share your favorite book(s) and some of your own completed coloring pages in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may have heard about the new craze: adult coloring and adult coloring books! I have to say that when I was a child, I LOVED to color. So I was very excited to see more complex and detailed books being published and targeted towards grownups. Back in March, I ordered Enchanted Forest: An Inky…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2129,18,1,15,1514],"tags":[2118,2120,2140,2136,2133,2137,2124,2139,2119,2130,2125,2126,2127,2135,2121,2131,1759,2132,2138,2122,2134,2128,2123,249],"class_list":["post-3815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-creativity","category-entertainment","category-general","category-photography-and-pics","category-things-to-do-2","tag-adult-coloring","tag-adult-coloring-books","tag-best-coloring-books","tag-cats-coloring-book","tag-color-ideas-enchanted-forest","tag-colored-pencils","tag-coloring","tag-coloring-book-recommendations","tag-coloring-books","tag-coloring-books-for-adults","tag-coloring-for-adults","tag-coloring-for-grownups","tag-colorist","tag-creative-cats","tag-enchanted-forest","tag-enchanted-forest-gallery","tag-fantasy","tag-gallery-of-finished-coloring-book-pages","tag-gel-pens","tag-johanna-basford","tag-mandella","tag-prismacolor","tag-secret-garden","tag-steampunk"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3815"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3993,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815\/revisions\/3993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}