Get out your Crayons and Color

Coloring Books for Adults and Paper Dolls

 

It’s true: everything old is new again. Coloring today is hot, and coloring sheets are given away at events and freely printable on the web.  Dover Books provides the latter.  Coloring is a economical way to pend time and to occupy kids and teach creative skills.

 

Around 1970, grade-schoolers started seeing a new kind of coloring book and paper dolls.  These books were not X-rated, but they were for adults.

 

Various publishers turned these adult coloring books out, and titles like “Henry VIII and his Wives” Paper Dolls to Color, “Infamous Women” Paper dolls to Color, Red Farm Studios “Antique Dolls to Color” and more.

 

These books were slimmer and painted on better paper than the Whitman coloring books we had as children. We had coloring book is inspired by dolls, including Barbie and Raggedy Ann, but only a few of these coloring books included paper dolls to color.

 

Adults soon caught on to the benefits of coloring books.  My mom used them in the Spanish class she taught.  Later, she designed quilt block patterns from my coloring books.

 

Even 30 years ago, we knew the joys of coloring.  One of my closet friends, a young mother of 3 girls, used to color as a hobby.  Another friend, a man, collected the Dover coloring books for adults.

 

As for me, I loved old coloring books, like the one my mom used as a cover for her favorite she music, “Midnight Bells.”  I enjoyed getting, and later giving, free coloring pages.  I especially loved “magic” coloring books.  When you used a wet brush to fill in the picture, colors magically appeared.  Also fun were connect the dots coloring books. Whitman used to make great books, many based on popular TV shows and cartoons.

 

I enjoyed doodling my own pictures and paper dolls to color.  I confess that in the past while sitting through boring meetings, I would doodle entire families of paper dolls to color later and to cut out.  The finished products now populate doll houses and albums in my collection. One tiny set represents Lestat, Louis, and Claudia from “Interview with the Vampire.”  I converted an extra doll trunk that came with one of my Terri lee dolls into a townhouse for them.   Celebrity doodle auctions are very popular, as are doodle books.

 

Today, we are surrounded by coloring opportunities for adults.  Hundreds of cites on The Net provide free printable ages to color, and you can buy books online.  Elaborate adult coloring books are everywhere, and paper dolls to color appear on Marilee’s Paper Doll Page on line, and in various magazines about dolls, including “Doll Castle News.

The craze is ongoing, so why not create your own set of paper dolls to color, and populate a paper doll house with them!