Coloring Mandalas 2: For Balance, Harmony, and Spiritual Well-Being (An Adult Coloring Book)

This book has 72 mandalas for coloring, I enjoy this book immensely.

Nice book but expensive

I have recently 'researched' this market due to my latest fad and hobby interest, and got rather frustrated with reviews (and indeed the product descriptions on Amazon's website!) not giving enough factual information about such books.The purpose of this review is to remedy this and help others looking for good colouring-in books.I am pretty delighted with this book as the mandalas themselves are very good and attractive ones in my opinion, the quality of the designs amongst colouring-in books varies very much in this respect. I bought two previous mandala colouring-in books where I found the mandalas so unattractive-looking I didn't really feel motivated to colour them in.The designs in this book are mainly symmetrical, abstract or semi-abstract, and fairly precisely - but not machine-perfectly - drawn. They have quite a bit of detail, but are not too fussy/intricate, and the black lines are of very reasonable, medium thickness that varies within each design. One possible issue for some, depending on taste, is that they are really rather large, you have the dimensions, they go to little more than a centimeter, less than an inch, of the edge of the page.Very importantly, the back of the pages is (almost) blank, so if you were to take one out to say, frame it, you would not lose another image. There is just one descriptive sentence about the next mandala on the back of each mandala (so that the description is seen to the left of each mandala page). The ring-binding is good for removing pages, and for the book to lie flat.One gripe is that the paper is rather thin for a colouring book, so that you can see the next mandala through the page. This really isn't ideal, but is the only major drawback of this book. Otherwise the paper quality is fine, it is white and smooth, not coarse like some children's drawing books.The introductory text is not very long but rather dense and a bit unfocused I found. You can tell the author knows, and is serious about, her subject, but it could be more engagingly written, in my personal opinion. However, this is really a very minor point. I am considering buying the first book, and as apparently it covers the whole journey through all the self-development stages (this volume relates only to stage 9, Cristallisation) I imagine (and hope) the text might be a bit longer and more instructive. The text in this book is merely informative with little in the way of instruction, and informative in a way that covers broad ground, but only scratches the surface of each subject touched on.The cover is made of slightly thicker cardboard. Beware, the book is of a size and shape that makes it very vulnerable to postal damage, mine arrived slightly bent. Should really be posted in reinforced envelope, but what can you do. Our local Waterstones doesn't stock a single mandala colouring-in book, to my surprise in such a New-Agey city as Manchester.COMPARATIVE REVIEW: The other good colouring-in books seem to be by Monique Mandali, same size book, very slightly smaller designs, thumbs up for slightly thicker paper, which is more like the typical children's colouring-in book paper, i.e. off-white and a little coarse. In fact they are real, no-frills colouring-in books with hardly any text, and also have a blank back to the pages. Mandali's designs are a similar style (also mainly symmetrical, and either abstract or semi-abstract), but overall probably slightly more simple and less detailed. I probably slightly prefer Fincher's designs overall, but only just.

This is my 2nd purchase of this book. I enjoyed it the 1st time but wanted to repeat some of the designs differently. If, like me, you're a "grown-up" but useless at art, this book is a great way to express yourself in colour. Very relaxing too!

Bought as a present, very pleased with it.

If you are looking for complex designs this is not the book for you. The designs are more like something from a childrens colouring book. Disapointing

I took a basic design from here and used a modified version on a drum I painted for myself. These are really lovely and make you feel uplifted as you work on them.