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  About Amy Hello, I'm Amy, an aspiring motorsports writer and former blogger.  If you dig deeper enough, you find some very old blog posts, as this started as a book blog, but that's really where I got my start in writing: book reviews, hot book topics and as well as the odd personal essay.  After leaving university, I left the book blog behind, but continued writing and going in the world of social media, writing film reviews and promoting queer cinema, but after a tragic event in my personal life, I quickly discovered Motorsports.  What started as a love for Formula 1, while finally watching the Formula 1 film, Rush, and discovering Formula 1 TikTok, this love soon expanded to everything Formula E, IndyCar, Formula 2, Formula 3, as well as F1 Academy.  I soon found the itch to write come back, with the fast-moving news of motorsport, to the drama, the competition, and the journey of drivers trying to find a race seat. I found that it was the people and storie...

Book Review: Secret Garden Artist's Edition: A Pull-Out and Frame Colouring Book by Joanna Basford

* I have received this book for review from the publisher but this in no way affects my review *

Secret Garden Artist's Edition: A Pull-Out and Frame Colouring BookTitle: Secret Garden Artist's Edition: A Pull-Out and Frame Colouring Book
Author: Joanna Basford
Source: Received from Publisher
Publisher: Laurence King Publishing but received from Midas PR
Rating: 4/5 stars









Summary of the Secret Garden from Goodreads:

This beautiful and interactive coloring book features delicate and highly detailed pen-and-ink illustrations—all waiting to be brought to life with color. As added entertainment, tiny garden creatures are hidden on the pages, waiting to be found, and a key and index are included in the back. The book's cover and jacket are also colorable.

Book Review Summary:

Adult colouring books have been the craze for the last year and I was yet to jump on to the craze, so when I was offered this book I had to say yes and I was so happy, I did. The illustrations inside were beautiful and they were a joy to colour. 

My thoughts:

        The Secret Garden: Artist Edition was just what I wanted from an adult colouring book, it had beautiful illustrations, which were amazing especially on Joanna Basford's part and were a wonderful to colour. The 20 designs were really exciting and it was hard to pick the designs to use as they were all amazing. The designs were on card which made the it useful to use pens on it as these were not going to leak though to the next page which was good considering I found it a lot easier to use pens in contrast to pencils, but this was just a personal preference.
         This being the Artist Edition of the Secret Garden, the designs could be taken out. This was quite useful because sometimes it was hard to get into the small parts of the design and by taking out the designs this meant that you could get into the small places. The fact that you can take it out is also useful if anyone is an artist and they wanted to frame their works. This is not something I would consider doing, but obviously this is a good positive for someone who does do art. Obviously it being a colouring book, I feel like it gave me some creativity back and was a way to be more creative something that I haven't done in a long while. This was in terms of a picking the right colour scheme and things like that. 
           Although this was a great book especially for the Christmas season, I did have some minor problems with it. At some points I found that bits were really small and they were really hard to colour and some of the designs were really complex. Also I find that a lot of the colouring books are aimed at maintaining good "mindfulness" and improving your mindfulness and I would suggest that this is not one like that. I found the designs really beautiful and I didn't want to mess anything up so I therefore don't think it was relaxing for me personally. 
           Although there were some bad points, I would still recommend this book especially in terms of a Christmas present. 

My attempts: 



















The Verdict:

The Secret Garden: Artist Edition is a joy to colour with it's amazing illustrations and is definitely a good buy especially for any budding artists. 

Have you bought and enjoyed the Secret Garden Artist's Edition? Did you enjoy it? Leave them in the comments below. 

See you soon, 

Amy

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