Colouring for Adults

Have you heard of this new craze? People are designing colouring books for adults!  I spent many hours colouring Doodle Art pictures when I was young, so I had to try these books out. One of the most popular is Secret Garden by Johanna Basford. This is my first page from the Secret Garden book.

Johanna's book was totally sold out in New Zealand in July, so I bought a Bollywood one instead (on the left below). I started a couple of pictures in it, but soon found that colouring was eating into stitching time.

another picture from the Bollywood book

Last week new supplies of Secret Garden arrived on the shelves, and as soon as I looked inside I knew I had to buy it.  The drawings are amazing - there's so much detail in them.

with my la passacaglia rosettes

It took me four days to colour this picture. I used felt pens on this one. I used to do card making and I had some old Tombow brush pens which were great for this.  I think I'll try coloured pencils on my next page though, just to see the different effects.

In other news: This is a Trip Around the World block I made for our Capital Quilters Block of the Month.

Here's how they looked together:

I would have loved to win them all, but they went to someone else, so I might just have to make my own version one day. Another quilt to add to the list.

Finally, I've just finished this book and I enjoyed it. It's the true story of a New Zealand gardener working in Wellington, Scotland, Los Angeles and Mexico City. He's not the greatest writer ever, and I did skip bits, but most of it was very interesting. I got mine on my kindle from Amazon.