what are your thoughts on adult colouring books? when i first heard of the idea of colouring books specifically marketed toward adults, i was intrigued. i loved colouring as a child, and although i sometimes didn’t stay inside the lines, i remember it as a fun and soothing activity, one in which i could lose myself for hours until my hand cramped so much i could no longer hold my crayon / colour pencil / marker.

as a teenager and young adult i no longer coloured, but i would doodle on anything i could get my hands on. in the margins of my notebooks. in my planners. in all the scrapbooks i started but never finished. if i had downtime, i was doodling. i graduated from crayons and markers to gel pens and thin-tip sharpies, collecting them in every shade i could get my hands on.

so really, i am the ideal market for an adult colouring book. enter katie walsh, the ultimate gift-giver. while i was home for christmas, walshie presented me with my gift, a 2016 colouring calendar. a behemoth of a book, it has over 300 designs to colour in and doubles as a planner, so you can colour one picture for nearly every day of the week [saturdays and sundays are combined on one page]. i was elated.

i lugged it back to bangalore with me but let it languish for a few weeks, reminding myself that i needed to get some colour pencils so i could get started. and then i bought colour pencils, began filling in the first page, and promptly remembered that i greatly dislike colour pencils because they take too long to use and you constantly have to worry about breaking them.

luckily i remembered that my parents had very kindly brought my collection of thin-tip sharpies when they came to visit in august, so i pulled those out and got to work. the colours were much more vibrant, and a piece of paper stuck between the pages ensured they didn’t bleed through onto the next day.

it took me quite a few hours to fill in all the intricacies, but i was so proud of myself when i finished my first picture that i didn’t even care that i could no longer move my right hand; i was hooked. i colour whenever i’ve got an extra 15 or 20 minutes, and it’s a great way to wind down at the end of the day — i put on a podcast and catch up on world happenings while i fill in various designs in my book.

now i am obsessed with all things colouring books [we’re really not surprised by this] and am making wish lists of the next ones i would like to procure. in no particular order:

• harry potter coloring book, because harry potter.
• star wars coloring book for adults, because i want to get one for me and one for my brother and see how we each interpret the designs.
• calm the f*ck down, because we all have those days where we have lots of things we want to say and no outlet for all of them. and also because it will make me laugh.
• the indie rock coloring book, because the proceeds go to charities working with music education.
• steampunk fashions coloring book, because it just looks like so much fun.
• the mindfulness colouring book, because just looking at the cover immediately relaxes me.
• mehendi designs coloring book, because it will be a childhood dream brought to life.
• travel between the lines, because then i can have a new goal — colour in a page only after i have visited the place pictured!
• boss babes, because i dream of growing up to be as awesome as these women.
• secret garden coloring book, because it would bring to life one of my favourite stories and because it is the one that set the ball rolling on this new trend.

i want them all! and the best part is, they are all $10 or less, so it’s an affordable habit to have.

which one looks most appealing to you? have you jumped on the adult colouring book bandwagon yet?

xx