Jesus Calling: Creative Coloring & Hand Lettering

This is based off of Sarah Young's immensely popular devotional called Jesus Calling, one of my favorite devotionals. Knowing know much the devotional itself has impacted my life, I was quite excited to get my hands on a copy of this new coloring book. I'm not sure what I think about this coloring book. On one hand I think the colorable pictures are adorable and the traceable templates for hand lettering are lovely. On the other hand, I expected the coloring book to be filled with select readings from the Jesus Calling devotional. Instead, there were one or two sentence quotes, sometimes even just phrases, taken from the devotional and placed in the coloring book to be either colored around or hand lettered. I was simply expecting something different than what this coloring book actually is. That's not the coloring book's fault though.

All that to say, as far as adult coloring books go, this is a nice one! The size is large and there are about 100 pages to color. The designs are varied and fun to color. I liked how there's a guided tutorial and templates for learning hand lettering spread throughout the book, which is unique. For someone who isn't good at hand lettering, that was fun to try! If you're looking for a new coloring book that helps focus your day on God, this would be a good option for you! Just know that the pages don't have a daily reading or any kind on them and be confused like I was.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This is an interesting coloring book that brings together quotes from the Bible and from the "Jesus Calling" devotional. As you color the detailed drawings of animals, flowers, water, church, designs, any other kinds of drawings, you will have the opportunity to be encouraged through Bible verses and inspirational messages. There are also ways to learn hand lettering, such as at the back of the book there is a page you can trace upper and lowercase lettering, and with the lettering of the Bible verses and messages given throughout the book, they use different kinds of lettering along with normal black lettering that is already filled in. The pages with lettering are on the opposite side of the drawings; some of the lettering pages contain drawings with the lettering also (on the top and/or bottom for instance).

This coloring book contains illustrations that can be used with many different colors, depending on how much color one can imagine in the illustrations. I colored flowers different colors (for instance on one of the flowers I colored the leaves one shade of purple and the inside of the flower a different shade of purple) and also with different shades of green (for the stems and leaves). Most of the illustrations are so detailed, such as with the illustrations of birds which are often so detailed that their beak, feet, wings, and feathers can all be colored different colors.

I used markers, gel pens, water soluble colored pencils and regular colored pencils in this coloring book. The markers bled through some of the drawing I used them on a little bit (the paper seems pretty thick to me). The gel pens didn't bleed through any of the paper that I noticed. The water soluble colored pencils glided on smoother than the regular colored pencils and in my opinion were easier to color with (didn't take me as long to color with). I am happy with the way that all coloring utensils worked on the drawings and paper in this coloring book!

This book would be great to be given as a gift. There is a page where someone can fill in "To", "From", and the "Date" it is given.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher for the purpose of reviewing it. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.