Colour Me Mindful

Colour Me Mindful

Rating: 5/5

Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher

Ah stress, how I loathe you. Unfortunately we all feel the stress from time to time, I myself, have been feeling it a lot more lately. Despite appearances, being a struggling actor is not fun. Yes, I have lots of time to read, I workout a lot as well to keep in shape for certain roles that may came up. But in general, peoples attitudes towards struggling actors, and I'm talking family as well as randoms, aren't all that great. I've done my time doing a course, and I get whatever extras jobs I can, but I'm still in search of an agent to get properly decent auditions for actual proper roles. As such, I feel like a layabout and like people view me as one, despite the fact that I actually do get a lot of things done, so I'm currently debating whether or not to get myself in a load of debt and do a distance learning Ancient History and Archaeology course as a backup plan to acting. If I do it distance then I can still be available for acting jobs. I mean I got a text the day before a shoot about being a body double in Matt Smith's new TV show, it's usually very last minute. 

Now why do you care about my personal life and my personal stresses? What has it got to do with this review? Well, as a highly stressed person myself lately, I'm in serious need of some stress relief. Back when I smoked, I'd slope outside with my headphones in and listen to a song, stare up at the sky and have a puff whenever I needed to relax or clear my head. I no longer smoke, so what do I do instead? 

Well, normally I would read. Now, some of you who follow me on Twitter may or may not know about the saga of my neighbours. The ones who didn't like where the plugs where and moved them to the inner walls, thus messing with the soundproofing, so now it's like we all live in one giant house. Except they can't hear us, but we can hear them. All the time. They're like the housemates we never wanted. We can hear them talking, laughing, shouting, screaming, singing, slamming doors, turning on lights, flushing toilets, watching TV, they can't seem to listen to music without it being on full volume. Weekdays they usually keep one of us awake until gone 1am. Weekends you can be awake until 4am. The holidays are the worse and just the other day I was kept awake until 5am, and I can no longer deal with my sleeping being messed up because of early call times. So even more stress. 

All of this noise however, is not conducive to reading. Well, I can read with it, or with the TV on to drown them out, but it's not really, truly relaxing to me, reading with noise to drown out other noise. In summer it's a bit better because my fan usually drowns them out. But still. 

So here we come to the review, after I have gotten way too personal and given you way more information than you ever needed about me. I needed a way to relax. I volunteered to review three Colour Me Mindful colouring books. Promising to be a perfect way to relax and clear your mind. And they where. 

No matter what was going on around me, I was fully focused on trying not to colour outside the lines. Yes, I am 22, and I did struggle to stay in the lines, in my defence I was using felt pens and didn't think to use fine liners until late in the game. Either way, I found colouring the pages in to be extremely relaxing. 

The thing that makes these particular books so awesome, is that the pages are thick enough that you don't have to use pencils. You can use felt pens and it won't go through to the other side. There's a wide variety of designs in the book, patterns, big pictures, smaller pictures, all that have little intricacies to them, patterns on them or around them, that make them more interesting. 

These pictures are so stunning, even not being coloured in, that I have been forbidden from colouring in the elephant and the frog until it can be photocopied by my mother for whatever purpose she has in mind. Colouring them herself perhaps, or perhaps wanting to frame it, I don't know, but the designs are stunning and give you lots to focus on as you colour. 

There's been a lot of hype surrounding these adult colouring books recently, it's certainly become a trend, but I was always unsure. I don't particularly like using colouring pencils. Well I don't mind it, but it depends on what I'm doing. Usually I don't get the vibrant colour I want or the coverage, but then if I want to go for something lighter they're fine. Anyway, I look at these adult colouring books and I'm thinking "well....thats my pens out...the paper is surely too thin". Well I don't know about other books on the market, but like I said, the pages are thick enough I'm certain you can use any medium. Perhaps even paint? I was going to use my chalk pastels, but I didn't have any setting spray left and neither did I have any hairspray. Hairspray is a GREAT substitute for setting spray, in case anyone was wondering, it's way cheaper too!