Tag Archives: Christmas

Coloring Book

Christmas & Travel Mosaics – How To Travel The World While You Color

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I’ve become enamored with color-by-number coloring books this year. I’ve tried a a few different brands, and one of my favorites so far is Belba Family. Their newest holiday book is a treat!

Christmas & Travel Mosaics lives up to its name. From religious to secular, you can celebrate winter holidays from around the world as you color.

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I’m super impressed by the advances that Belba Family is making to their coloring books. In their first book, the only way to check the color/number key was on the back cover. Now, they have it printed on the edge of each page, and I cannot tell you how much nicer and easier it is.

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I love the accessibility of this book. The price is affordable, and the color key is filled with colors that can be found with ease no matter what your favorite media; crayons, colored pencils, gel pens, markers or watercolors.

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Disability Notes: I found the coloring book has designs large enough to accommodate nearly any coloring age group. Some designs are more complex than others, but all are delightful! If you have eye issues, you may have difficulty seeing the numbers as they are printed in a charcoal ink that is designed to blend into the colored page.

Where to buy: Christmas &Travel Mosaics is available at Amazon. The book’s MSRP is $9.99 USD. There is also a non-color by number version of the book available.

Belba Family: Website / FaceBook / Instagram

Disclosure: I received this coloring book for free in exchange for a review. The opinions are my own. All art shown on this post is Copyright ©2019 Belba Family. The coloring is mine. All links are direct; I do not make money from them.

Thanks for reading, and please click the Follow Button under my profile on the right side of the page. To support posts like this in the future, consider joining my Patreon!

Puzzle Review

25 Days of XMAS – Day 5

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So this is a new sort of post for me, and yet it’s not. You see, normally I either get a puzzle directly from the manufacturer, or I buy them. Today’s post is sponsored by SeriousPuzzles.com, an online puzzle distributor. They carry thousands of puzzles by just about every possible brand! They sent me my first ever shaped puzzle to assemble!

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It’s so festive!

I’ll admit I was super stoked when this puzzle arrived only a few days after I ordered it. The email updates and tracking of my puzzle were top-notch! Serious Puzzles knows their customers! Most puzzlers I know are horribly impatient when it comes to waiting for a new puzzle to arrive!

Sadly, no sooner than I started to assemble this lovely puzzle than I ran into  2 problems. The first was annoying, but workable – As this is a shaped puzzle, I had no framework to build with and had to adjust my style slightly. SC helped quite a bit. The second issue was worse, I caught a horrible cold that took me out for 3 days. Sneezing, coughing, general misery. I got very little puzzling done while I was ill.

The Twelve Days of Christmas x 2 is a really nifty collage style puzzle that references the Christmas carol that involves an overly eager True Love who likes to gift his beloved with fowl and people. This puzzle has twice the usual amounts, with the lyrics being the subjects of both ornaments and the gifts under the tree.

Overall, I really liked this puzzle. It may be awhile before I attempt another shaped one, but I do know that Serious Puzzles has several of the hard to find puzzles on my Christmas list and that I’ll definitely order from them again!

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PUZZLE SPECS

  • Company: Sunsout
  • Title: The Twelve Days of Christmas x Two
  • Artist: Lori Schory
  • Year released: 
  • Pieces: 1000
  • Cut-Style:  Random
  • Finished size: 27 x 3′ inches
  • Bonus poster: No
  • Made in USA

QUALITY: 

  • Box: Thin cardboard, 12½ x 12½ x 2 inches
  • Board:  Medium weight chipboard, sturdy pieces
  • Cut: Steel-cut Die
  • Image Quality: Excellent, great color saturation
  • Finish: Semi-gloss
  • Puzzle Dust: Moderate
  • Piece shapes: A good mix of traditionally cut and irregular pieces
  • Piece Fit: Excellent. Some of the irregular pieces make it so that pieces can only be moved in small groups.

Disability Notes: The smaller size pieces of the 1000 piece puzzle are harder on the hands and eyes. I can recommend this for people with mild arthritis or good to excellent hand/eye coordination.

Where to buy: The Twelve Days of Christmas x Two is available on the  Serious Puzzles website for $15.95 USD.

Serious Puzzles : Website / FaceBook

Disclosure: I received a complimentary puzzle from Seriouspuzzles.com in exchange for a review. The opinions are my own.

Thanks for reading, and please click the Follow Button under my profile on the right side of the page.To support posts like this in the future, consider joining my Patreon!

Coloring Book, Uncategorized

25 Days of XMAS – Day 3

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Hi guys! It’s Day 3 and a Monday, which is typically SC’s designated day off. Mondays are when I get house stuff done. However, I’m not feeling so hot (winter weather making my body ache), so today is about one of my favorite low-key activities.

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I found Sunlife Drawing Company through a Facebook ad, of all things. It’s a small coloring book publisher who focuses on a particular type of coloring. All of us have done color by number at some point in our lives, and most adult colorists tend to ignore this style.

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What could this be??

The Christmas Animal Quest and Animal Quest books are definitely NOT child’s play! The full-page single sided book has images made of thousands of tiny numbered hexagons on the coloring side, while the back is a white text on black background list of the colors needed for the opposite page.  I have to admit, I loved this book!

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Birds? Maybe??

I enjoyed the level of focus needed to match colors to numbers, and the freedom that not having to decide which color went where gave me. Also, each new color unveiled more of the image, keeping me guessing as to the subject matter for quite a while!

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It’s a set of turtledoves and an angel! Super cute!

The reveal at the end was well worth it! Now, this is not a coloring project that goes quickly; and I did find out about halfway through that my progress would have went faster if I had chosen my colors ahead of time. Still, a perfect low impact activity for listening to Christmas carols on the radio and having a hot cup of tea.

Disability Notes: Due to the small size of the hexagons that make up the images, I can’t in good conscience recommend this coloring book for people with vision impairments or fine motor control issues. However! Sunlife Drawing does have a few books in their Mosaic series that have larger coloring areas!

Where to buy: Christmas Animal Quest Color by Number is available on Amazon for $8.99 USD.

Sunlife Drawing : Website / FaceBook

Disclosure: I received this coloring book for free in exchange for a review. The opinions are my own. All art shown on this post is Copyright ©Sunlife Drawing. The coloring is mine.

Thanks for reading, and please click the Follow Button under my profile on the right side of the page. To support posts like this in the future, consider joining my Patreon!