Color Therapy ... !

Hands up those who loved 'colouring in' as a child?  Thought so ... me too!  I remember that sense of utter joy when I received a brand new set of felt tips, all juicy and rich, or some new coloring pencils ...  I can still recall the year I received a big tin of Caran d'Ache pencils in my Christmas stocking (well, actually it was a pillow case).  I can see them now,  all lined up in rainbow formation with pristine points, just begging for a colouring book (which Santa had also thoughtfully included!).

I haven't changed much and to this day am still a sucker for any kind of beautiful stationery ... from colorful pens - markers, watercolors, chalk or even sparkly glitter ones - to pretty notebooks and journals.   The other day I came across an article on the therapeutic qualities of coloring and how it is increasing in popularity amongst adults as a form of relaxation and stress relief, improving motor skills and increasing creativity (see link Health benefits of Coloring In).

I have never really stopped 'coloring in' and often use a hand colored image as the main focal point of a card or scrapbook page or sometimes just like to color for the sheer pleasure of it!  I have noticed that there are many Adult colouring books appearing in shops and online just lately (if you go to Amazon and search for  'adult coloring books', you will find pages of them!).  However, you can also find hundreds of free ones available for you to download and print off yourself, if you search for 'free adult coloring pages' via Google or on Pinterest.  As the football season is upon us once again, and Sunday night football monopolizes the TV, last night I decided to do just that and found this lovely owl.

I downloaded it and printed it off on some smooth white card and then colored it in with my Promarker alcohol ink pens - these are quite expensive (a present from Santa a couple of years ago!) but beautiful to color with and don't leave any 'coloring lines' like traditional markers.  They also have a fine tip at one end and a chisel tip at the other which makes coloring large areas much quicker.

I often get stuck choosing color schemes for my colored images, and so tend to use sites like Design Seeds for inspiration (they are also great for deciding on decorating color schemes!).  I loved the colors used in this one from houzz.com (which I found on trusty Pinterest) so selected the closest colours from the pens I had, in this case Forest Green, Leaf Green, Pastel Beige, and three pens from the Cool Grey set - 3, 4 & 5.

When I had finished coloring my ow1, I cut her out, matted her onto some plain green card, gave her some googly eyes and a sparkly silver bow and turned her into an easel card using a large white circular card blank I had in my stash.  I used my Cricut explore to print the sentiment and then cut the  label which I mounted on foam tape to act as the 'stopper'.

Why not have a go yourself and rekindle that love of coloring!  Just find yourself a free image,  grab yourself a set of pens/pencils/chalks/pastels ... whatever you like ... and get coloring!

(While you are at it,  type Zentangle into your search engine and have a look at those too ... you will be amazed at how much fun you can have with a piece of paper and a black pen ... plus you can color them in afterwards!  It's addictive!).