Colouring In: Enchanted Forest by Johanna Basford

I've mentioned colouring in rather a lot recently. This is because I'm obviously spending quite a lot of time doing it at the moment. I've got quite the collection of colouring books but my copy of Enchanted Forest by Johanna Basford is kind of my go to one at the moment.

I'm not sure what it is that makes some colouring books more attractive to me than others. My other favourite is my Art Therapy one which my Mum got me for my birthday, I think the two books are sort of similar in style since there are pictures which are made up of lots of little details. I can't put my finger on just why these ones are preferable over the Colour Me Calm one, but I think it's something to do with the intricate details.

I like to work on a picture that takes me a week to finish. One which requires me to keep on sharpening my pencils to get into the small corners. One which looks like an actual work of art when it's finished, not just like a picture that I've coloured in.

The pictures in Enchanted Forest fit the bill perfectly. I'm due to get Secret Garden and Lost Ocean at the end of the month. I'm not sure how I'll divide my loyalties between all my colouring books with another two being added to the collection. My problem at the moment is that I finish a page, and immediately want to go on to the next one, rather than using one of my other colouring books.

I picked up Enchanted Forest on my way to Wales and discovered Johanna Basford's website while I was down there. She has a 'Colouring Gallery' page where you can upload your finished pictures for other people to 'like'. Of course, once I'd finished my first couple of pages I had to share them on the site.

That's the title page of the book. I mostly worked on this using my Crayola Blendables colouring pencils. I got them for my twenty-first birthday when I was on placement at a teeny tiny primary school and have been hanging on to them ever since. This seemed like a good time to crack them out.

It took about two days alone to colour in all the leaves making up the name of the book! I basically just lined up all my pencils and worked through them all because in that pack I only had two different shades of green so I realised it'd get boring fast if I just did green leaves. I love the effect of all the different colours.

I've not taken a picture of the next page, which isn't quite complete, but the one after that is one of my favourites. By the time I got to doing the Map Page I'd taken to looking at the Colouring Gallery every few days to see the latest uploads and noticed that quite a few people were doing rainbow gradients. I liked the effect so decided to try it out on this one:

For this one I branched out from the Blendables to give me more choices of shades and got the Scribblicious pencils my Mum got me for my birthday. These include a metallic silver and gold which I'm having fun with using for embellishments, like at the corners.

Something I've noticed from scanning ahead in the book is that all of the things that feature in the map are seen again later in the book. The page immediately after this one is a compass (which you can see in the bottom left corner of the map), later there's a maze and a bird holding a key. It's going to be good fun seeing them all in more detail.

Speaking of the compass, I have actually finished that one as well, but I've not got a photo of it yet. I'll share a sneak peak of it though, see if you can spot the cameo appearance I've coloured in there.

Nothing like a bit of colouring in to start the day. #colouringin #JohannaBasford

A photo posted by Cait (@clicksclan) on Sep 29, 2015 at 12:13am PDT