A few hours later, bedtime rolled around. I took my evening meds and was unwinding for sleep but my husband was upset. Once the kids were settled, I suggested we sit on the couch and watch tv for a while. I sat there for an hour before getting frustrated by trying to stay awake, so I pulled out my coloring book bags and settled down to draw.
None of my extra fine tip sharpies or nicely sharpened colored pencils were appropriate for the job, but the wider "fine" sharpies worked very well to efficiently color in the larger empty spaces. With the black background, staying neatly in the likes wasn't a problem and I got to practice blending techniques that I had only been doing with the extra fine pens until then. I even got to finish a whole page the same day I started it!!
As always, there were some words I didn't like and won't color, but it's important to put on your big girl panties when buying a book like this. If you are going to be totally bent out of shape about a crude word or two, just steer clear of buying sweary coloring books. If you want to carefully avoid certain words, you can go to his facebook page and download sample pages. Don't be surprised if after downloading a few, you decide to go and order his books anyway!
Another nice thing is that the binding released the page much more easily than many of my other coloring books. I would prefer perforated pages, but I didn't tear off the entire side of the page the way I do with some of my other inexpensive coloring books. For the record, if you're less lazy than I am, you can take the book to an office supply store (staples is the one I've heard people talking about) and they can neatly cut the bonding off for you. But that requires leaving the house, so I just tear and hope. Somewhere around here is a box with an xacto knife, which is also supposed to give you good results, but again... lazy.
James Alexander is ALWAYS a pleasure to talk to on facebook and I am happy to support his career by purchasing his books. While I do have specific pages that I won't color, the books are reasonably priced and I don't feel cheated the way I have with some other much much more expensive books.
