Book Review – Color By Number Mandalas

9781633222137

Take your love for coloring to the next level. You’ll start your coloring journey with a short introduction detailing a basic color-by-number guide with tips and examples of each medium and then you’ll delve into over 30 unique, color-by-number templates that will allow and encourage you to color and create your own masterpieces.

As designs become more complex, you’ll have less numbers, which will provide you with an additional challenge and encourage you to choose your own colors and patterns to complete the design.

Need some ideas to spark your creativity? This book is also includes a full-color reference gallery. With more than 30 color-by-number templates to color, beginners and intermediate artists of all ages will be mesmerized by this unique spin on the traditional color-by-number activity book.

There is a whole series of these books including titles such as Animal Friends, Around the world, Flowers and many more

Check them all out here.

I’ve done embroidery on paper before and it’s a lot of fun. You can use a needle to punch out a particular shape to stitch, or my favorite thing is to take a copy of an old photograph or a page from a magazine and add stitched details to the original picture.

One thing I haven’t tried but would also be fun to do is cross stitching on paper.

This is a technique that requires a fair amount of preparation because you need to find a pattern you can easily transfer and print it at actual size, then use the pattern itself to help you decide where to put the holes in your paper. And then after all that you can do your stitching.

It’s a pretty straightforward process, but Crewel Ghoul has a great tutorial that walks you through how to do it step by step. It even includes a sample pattern you can print out and try for practice.

The post also has tips for starting and finishing your threads so that the back looks as neat as it can, if that’s something that’s important to you. (When I have done embroidery on paper I usually just tape the thread end to the back. If the back were going to show I’d probably just cover it with more paper.)

Stitching on paper is a fun way to make bookmarks or greeting cards, but you also need to make sure your paper is thick enough to support the holes you’ll be making in it. This post has a good rundown of materials you’ll need and what kind of paper is best. She used watercolor paper but I’ve used card stock and scrapbook paper that was a little thicker than the average printer paper.

You can always test a little on the paper you’re considering to make sure it will stand up to the project.

Check out the post, which includes a video, over at Crewel Ghoul for more tips for cross stitching on paper. Is this something you’ve tried before? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul]

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