Coloring for Stress Relief? I’m Doing It

I know, I know. Everyone has jumped on the coloring bandwagon. Everyone. If you scroll through Instagram for any length of time, you’re guaranteed to see someone’s colored pencils laid out with a beautifully colored coloring page. When I first heard about coloring books for adults (which sounds way less racy than “adult coloring books”), I was on board. I love to color and draw with my daughter, but I hadn’t taken the step of purchasing a coloring book. Instead I colored her books and worked on drawing. (Turns out if you actually work on drawing, you do improve even if you have NO raw talent for it.)

But Jenn decided to buy coloring books for our writers for the holidays, and, of course, we had to purchase one for ourselves. Now, I’m super hooked. First, I started by coloring a few pages of inspiration.

Then I got in deep by ordering Enchanted Forest by Johanna Basford. It is one of the first books I’d heard of when I discovered that coloring was a thing, so it had been in the back of my head tempting me.

While my husband gives me a bit of a hard time about my new hobby (deserved!), it’s actually really relaxing and a great creative outlet for those who aren’t great at sketching. Turns out you can be disgustingly talented at coloring, too — I’m not, but just search #enchantedforest or #johannabasford on Instagram to see what I mean.

I like this new hobby because I can do it with the kids. It helps me zone out. Lets me have some sort of creative outlet beyond writing. It gets me to turn off my phone and do something purely for the joy of it. Plus, it’s fun to see the page come along over time — particularly because it’s time-consuming to color some many details. So, I’m embracing my inner (totally outer) dork. I’m doing something I love and isn’t that what stress relief is all about?

Have you jumped on the craze? You’re going to want some high-quality colored pencils… —Erin