Gift Lab: Coloring Books as Art Therapy

Product: Personalized Coloring Book

Research: 

Coloring books are all the rage! A recent article from NYMag.com revealed that five of Amazon’s top 15 best-selling books right now are coloring books. I guess we adults didn’t appreciate our childhoods enough and what were likely our “best years.” How many of us avoided nap time in preschool only to beg our bosses as adults to purchase nap pods for the office? How many of you saw through my not-so-subtle attempt to get my co-workers reading this to inquire about getting nap pods here at UncommonGoods? Anways, back to coloring books. I didn’t spend a lot of time with coloring books as a kid because I much preferred to write my own stories and draw my own scenes, but I figure trying out this personalized coloring book and contemplating ways to get more sleep will help me right the wrongs of my past. Or, at the very least, it will give me something relaxing to do as I binge-watch,  Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown on Netflix.

Hypothesis: 

Based on my previous experience with coloring books, I may color outside of the lines. Hey, such is life.

Experiment: 

The great thing about this kind of experiment is that the directions are straight-forward: you pick a page and then you color it. Before I opened the coloring book I just assumed that the “personalized” part meant that you can order the book personalized with your name on the cover, but turns out most of the pages feature drawings with your name hidden in them.

Okay, so my name isn’t “Hannah,” it’s Anuli, but I really wanted to test out our merchant team’s product sample, sue me. It was pretty cool finding all of the ways the makers of the book incorporated a given name into the pages. I found coloring the pages while watching television to be very relaxing. However, I didn’t expect to spend so much time coloring (and, not finishing) one page. the giraffe below took me about two episodes of Parts Unknown to complete. I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun and trying to stay inside the lines.

Conclusion: 

You know what? I accept my childhood as is. Coloring books are nice, but I still would prefer to write my own stories and draw my own scenes. I didn’t realize how much time it takes to fill in just one page. I think I would have loved the experience more if I was on a train or somewhere without Wi-Fi and needed to kill some time.

I think it’s nice to color a page bits at a time before bed to cool down from the day, but I’ll have to keep my eye on the clock because it is easy to spend hours coloring. Not to say that’s a bad thing, but it may not be the best thing for someone who once sprained her wrist writing thank you cards. That being said, next time I need to hop on a train to visit my hometown, I’ll be sure to pack a coloring book and markers for the trip.