Coloring Books I Regret Buying (Unpopular Opinions?)😣 

The second book you showed with the two little girls on the front has tons of stolen artwork from Johanna Basford including the front and back covers. The thief superimposed pictures of the girls over Johanna's artwork making Johanna's work a background. Like you, this practice disgusts me. Great video! 👍

You don't have to make excuses for not liking certain books and styles. It is good to hear these kind of comments. Most colorists rave and gush about everything they buy, even the very simple books.

As a suggestion, check the RU-vid channels for the title of the book. It is rare when you will not find a flip through of the book. Many colorists have the books but they do not provide a full flip through. You can ask them and they will film a flip through. Another idea, is you can use them as giveaways when you reach a milestone. Have fun. You never need to compromise your coloring style.

Yes I appreciate the transparency of this video. A lot of colortubers just share the positive things even when an item sucks

I’m with you, Mandalas are too busy for me that requires laser concentration..🤩😅

I enjoyed the video and I think it is awesome that you were open and honest. I have a few zendoodle type books in my collection that I bought thinking I would grow to like them....so far I haven't changed my mind and they just sit untouched on a shelf.

lol the big eyes one is so creepy

As an antidote to this video, you should do a “my favourite colouring books” 🥰

Thank you for this. I have several times thought that someone should do this. I have occasionally thrown away books that I bought particularly through onlline sellers where I could not see the entire contents.

I just created my first coloring book and just waiting for the evaluation stage, but I want to create more. I have to say you give excellent feedback! My book has a mix of complex and simple images to color. If I do add intricate images I will post sample images to show folks what's in store. Please keep showing what you like and don't like I admire your honesty.

Thanks for the video…just my thoughts for you on several of the “busy” and “detailed” pages/books that you don’t like…you can color the busy parts in all one color so that you are not overwhelmed with them. I have seen many people coloring those types of images this way and they turn out beautiful. Like you said everyone has their own style and taste and that is what makes each and everyone of our completed pages a masterpiece 🤗🥰😜

I love the take this video has and whish more people would come out and spill the beans about the books they wish the hadn't bought for whatever reason. I like to way you trail blaze and I am curious to see what out do next...so I subscribed. :)

Great subject to discuss. We all have our likes and dislikes and we all get our duds here and there. I brought a thick pile of books to my mom last month - hopefully she will like them as our colouring styles are very different. Have a nice evening, Easter

I appreciate your honesty!

I have had buyer's remorse on a few books. One was really expensive from South Korea. I think I paid just as much for the shipping as the book cost. When I got the book and looked through it, I was really disappointed. The only way to return it was to pay for the shipping back to South Korea. It's now a very expensive practice book for trying out new techniques or color blends.

I enjoyed this video. It made me realize why I don't like some of my coloring books or why I gravitate toward certain books.

I appreciate the way you did this video. It's very difficult to know what to expect when you have no pictures or just a couple to go by. I've been burned by a couple and I just started coloring in July. lol I can tell I get overwhelmed if a page is too busy. I ordered a couple Zendoodle books and they are definitely too much for me right now. Maybe some day I'll be able to handle coloring in them because I do find them entertaining as a whole and enjoyed watching others show their finished pictures from them.

I didn’t like the million dogs and cats books either. I watched flip throughs and bought all her other books. The other book I can’t even flip through because I dislike the images so much is “Gnomes in the Neighborhood “ by Denyse Klette”. I pre-ordered it so didn’t watch a flip. I love her other books, but the noses on her Gnomes give me the creeps. The other books I won’t buy are those “Mythographic” books. I think the hidden objects ruin the pictures! The objects are so random. A roll of toilet paper and a potato peeler in a fantasy picture. Anyway nice to see a video with rants so I don’t feel alone.

I can admit I have several books I look at now and think, why did I buy this? 😆🤷

You are so much like me when it comes to pictures I want to color :) If they are intricate I get overwhelmed and don´t know what to do with them and not getting them done before I die. If they are too simple like the mandalas you showed I get bored and don´t know what to do with them either. Has to be something in between and I need to enjoy coloring the objects on the page. My favourite books right now are the Eriy books...love them.

Thank you for this frank video. I think it reflects the reality of purchasing colouring books mostly on line. In the UK very few shops sell colouring books so it is quite difficult to select the ones that you may enjoy without seeing them. The theft of art work in the way you have demonstrated is terrible and it’s a good idea to bring this bad practice to the attention of the colouring community. So thank you for that. I think a similar issue sometimes happens with art materials too and you may buy items and then find out that they do not perform as well as you had hoped. In these circumstances I often give my unwanted items to a charity store so that someone else can enjoy the. However I think rip art in colouring books should be returned to the seller or destroyed.Am looking forward to seeing more from your channel. Many thanks.

Just found your channel. This is a great video, I had purchased a book and it had stolen art from more than one artist! I was so mad that the company did this. Again I could not find any names etc. So I think you're video is informative. Glad I found your channel. Look forward to seeing your coloring videos. Thank you!

I'm so glad I found your channel, I just watched the video of lesser known books and have found a couple I really want to buy. This is a really interesting video, I really regret buying the Alena Lazareva 100 images book because the paper quality is pretty shoddy and an off white, it feels cheap. I don't think it makes you a bad person to film this video, it's interesting. Also I think your voice sounds like Britney and it's lovely :)

So glad you did this, it shows that even in the coloring world their are thieves.

Hi! I really enjoyed this video and your honesty. You have every right to your opinion don't feel bad. I am really picky on the coloring books i get and also a paper snob. I refuse to buy the creative haven books because of the paper quality lol. I also cant stand the mandala ones.

I agree with you 100% on the Lulu Mayo books. I love her more simple style of art in her later books.

I just subscribed to your channel because of this video. Very interesting topic, because all of us colorist have some regret books.

I agree on everything except Age of Elegance - I like it and the Color it book. But I would have to use a posca pen on lots of the excess lines to lighten them or make some completely disappear.

Thanks for the video. I'm just glad i'm not the only one that gets bamboozled

Videos like these are useful! The million cats/dogs book, but you said she changed her style so now I want to see her other books. I feel like we have the same taste in books 👍

This was a great video. I didn't agree with all of your opinions, but that is just a difference in taste nothing you need to apologize for! I actually agreed with you most of the time, but I do enjoy mandalas and liked what I saw of the ColorIt book. They are so expensive but loved their mandala books (😁) and the steampunk one. The mandalas are fun when I use the Color Cube cards. I get great results with those, especially when I use one that I normally wouldn't go for. Anyway, the fact that different people like different things is good. It would be boring if we were all the same!

I agree on a lot of your points especially the stolen art. I skipped the Sherri Baldy book because of the black filled eyes. I like eyes of all colors and i know i could probably use a white medium to fix this, but it easier to just skip it...... Now with that out the way, the Fashion ColorIt book for me is AWESOME, thanks for showing it, so i can find it to purchase.

I agree with you on everything. LOL. That baby in that book did look EVIL!! I have almost all of Lulu Mayo's books but never wanted Cats and Dogs!! I think those were her first books and she definitely improved !! Ellie Marks did that beautiful picture of the two tree frogs... I bought that PDF. Then she came out with Age of Elegance and I too was sadly disappointed. I like the "Color It" style of book with spiral bound book with perforated pages.. but I don't like their sketch style of drawing. You should use those books as giveaways because I'm sure other people like them. I won't be entering to win them though.🤣😂🤣😂 There I've been venting right along with you!!😄😄😄

So true that a lot of detail or overly busy compositions are not relaxing so even if the drawing is awesome, coloring it is not enjoyable.

I refuse to buy any books that do not have any pictures of what the pictures are inside because as they say "Don't judge a book by its cover." So many beautifully colored covers are really misrepresentative of the inside of the books.

there are more and more of these stolen artwork books on amazon... it becomes scary to buy a new/unknown books/authors (sometimes there is a made-up name)... the second book is also mostly stolen artwork - I recognise Johanna Basford and Amily Shen pictures..

I appreciate this video so much. Ive watched honestly over 50 videos on flips and recommendations and felt overwhelmed and confused on what to buy as a newbie to coloring books. Im an acrylic artist and thought I needed to find something else to keep me inspired in between painting down times. I think for me the last 2 books had too much heavy black ink lines. I didn't like them. Also didn't like the color of some of the paper..too white or too dirty looking. I also don't like images that aren't crisp looking. Some of those looked badly printed or uneven printing. I think one of them had reminded me of backgrounds I seen in popular other books. The Million Cats was also a turn off for me for almost the same reason and I'm a cat rescurer who was very disappointed when I saw another flip on that book. After the second page, I said NOPE. I get bored very quickly with repeating patterns and mandalas so I think its a style you just have to like to work in. The girls with the big eyes is exactly that for me...the eyes were overpowering the picture and way too big and dark. They should have been left clear so you could color them. I know when I paint people and animals, the eyes are everything...there was something there and I feel for me it was the eyes...too much and the repeating patterns on their dresses etc. I felt really bad about the stolen art. As an artist myself, I would be so upset to see my artwork out there being duplicated or massly printed without permission ...stolen! I think you did a great thing posting this video to bring awareness to others. I wouldn't have thought of checking for that until now. Anyhow, I really truly appreciate this video as a newbie trying to find the perfect book to start. I only want one to start. I love the Johanna Basford books so far. One of the books you reviewed had pieces I thought I had seen in one of her books. Anyhow, Thanks

Bless your heart. I can feel your anxiety.

First, I did not like the bigeyed girls either they looked creepy. Second, I find too simple mandalas offputting. Try to scan one of the uninteresting mandalas and print the picture as 1/3 or 1/4 of the original size. This has sometimes worked for me.

Everyone is different. I adore Million Cats and so does my family. Not only do I like the busy pictures (lots to do) but also the twisted sense of humor that makes you really think for a moment. For example, that picture of the cats at the bus stop is very interesting. If you look at it you realize that the bus is full of sad monsters going off to become hats (the same hats that the other cats waiting at the bus stop are wearing). She has one picture of bears coming out of...toasters....Yeah, it is odd but funny and it makes it unique. I do love Mandala because there are days I just want to not think and just do a repeated pattern to relax my brain. I practice Zintangle IN the large-spaced mandala (something you also don't seem to like). I find value in these because I can practice different swatching and color mixing and other technics in a non-threatening way. I am not concerned if they do not turn out perfectly. Beauty truly lies in the eyes of the beholder. I am not a big fan of Johanna Basford. I find her art very boring and tedious and I use it to "practice " like a textbook - I literally get anxious on every new Chris Cheng tutorial because I feel like I am obligated to do homework (but in a good way because it improves my coloring). It is useful to me, but not a style I am particularly fond of. I do not "regret" them but it is not an artist I go out and buy "everything".

I toss books often. And never regret it. Only ONCE did I recognize stolen images, immediately after purchase, returned to Amazon, wrote a trashy review and informed the artist. As for the Colorit book, EVERY single one has a flip through on their website. You look at each book, and scroll down halfway, for flip through, often also in live shows, a flip through, or also on their channel on YT. I have seen a flip through of every single one I chose, before purchase.

Thank you for sharing 🦋🌸

Finally honest opinions about coloring books, I’ve got a few terrible books that I brought cause they were in a haul video I’ve seen on RU-vid but almost nobody talks about printing quality or art style differences. Thank you for doing this video.

Loved the video! Brave but I understood your purpose exactly. I am a new subscriber of yours but have been colouring for 2 years. I went through my colouring books lately and culled many because they no longer appealed to me. I knew I would never colour in them. Game of Thrones, Hanna Lynn, Jasmine Becket Griffiths. Out! Maybe they became too overexposed for me. Everyone loves Johanna Basford. Her early books are so busy, in my opinion. I do have Forest but Secret Garden and most especially Lost Ocean have no appeal. Ivy and Inky ... lots of words on the page means lost colouring space. Some books have items I just do not like but I love the art so I figure well ok so 10 pages are terrible for me but 40 are good. Kerby and Johanna have those finish the drawing pages. Not going to. I bought to colour not draw. Who loves finding hidden objects? Argh! I hate books with a duplicate set. So I love Hannah Karlzon but I regret buying eight of her books. Too many. Wish I had stopped at three. They are pretty repetative. Small pet peeve are they marks, like stars on the faces. Like you I saw your books and like the Ellie Marks I cannot put my finger on it but none of those pictures called to me. I also see why you do not like overly detailed pictures. In my eyes they appear chaotic and turn me off. I do double page Kerby spreads so I will work at the right picture but Millie Marotta is someone I first rejected due to the zen doodling. But now I suddenly like her because I learned how not to colour every detail but colour OVER details and let them decorate inside the colouring. I think the more we colour the more our taste evolves. I think that is ok. I was disappointed in World of Wonder because there were so few pages I liked. I do not like wallpaper, or so many pages with huge unfilled space. Lastly, I know I am the only person to say this but when artists do pages of miniatures, you know 8 mini scenes on one page, I dislike that. I like a full cohesive page. So there you go, Becks, you thought you might be picky, oh girl I think I am the most wayward of colorists. But I am comfortable with it because atleast I know what I like and I use youtube for flip thru's to avoid making further mistakes. I am so grateful for all creators who do flip thru's.

I like this video. Something different. I agreed about the "evil baby" 😆had to laugh at that one!...I am the complete opposite. I am coloring in Entangles Landscapes which would probably give you shivers 😂.. I'm a triplet so maybe liking "small spaces" started early with me!😂 ...see ya!🙋🏵️

You might consider with the book by Marks that there is in most of the pictures a contradiction between the face styling and the clothing styling [the one that you say you might color does not have this to as great a degree]. The faces look like contemporary fashion models and not amount of coloring will change that. The clothing styles and backgrounds are Victorian/Edwardian.

For the books you dont like why not take to a charity shop or an old age home for them to use

Hope your doing ok beck

Hi, New subscriber here and I love your channel.

After a few fails I never buy a book without flipthrough. I would like more informations about paper und printquality too. I don't like any of these books. In the last one the backgrounds are awefull for me. I didn't had any idea what to do with. I like the last 2 books of Kerby Rosanes. No creepy doodles but yes it takes ages until finish a picture.

Really like your honesty. Just an FYI Jade Summer is a brand for multiple artist not a woman but I agree that mandala book was awful

I never purchase a book when I can only see the front and back covers. 😕

Insomnia hit a few nights ago and I watched all your videos. Didn't put me to sleep and you've found another subscriber. Up front I basically wouldn't purchase any of the books you've shown thus far nor would I or could purchase your taste($$$) in colored pencils. I totally gave up on coloring book haul videos when people's choices began to run to simplified images previously meant for 3-5 year olds or fill in the blanks with X color to reveal the hidden picture (might as well do diamond painting or cross stitch). You've caught a lot of haters with this video. I hope they don't keep you from voicing your opinions. Nothing irritates a person more than to have truth hit them over the head. I'm in the two digit numbers too (26) after even years of adult coloring and I still have lots of pictures to color. 🎨♿👵 Barb N.

Thank you! You are allowed freedom of opinion. Thieves deserve to be pointed out.

I too have some books I regret buying. It happens...there aren't many, but I have a few.

With the Sherri Baldy book I wish you had shown pictures from the book you liked to compare because all of her books look the same to me.

I am not a Mandala person either haha XD ;P Don't feel sorry for not being it your style ;) Everyone adores Hanna Lynn, but for me, that's just not my style of art.

The second books have a lot of Johanna Basford’s images in it. That’s why you couldn’t see previews. They know one day they will get busted

thank you! I use RU-vid flip through or amazon reviews with pictures before I buy. Imo basfords books are overrated and way to full of tiny tiny details. I live fragile world but it sure can eat up your pencils since the images are huge. I love twilight garden/trolle not so much karlzon since seasons is full of faces and hair. all time favorite menuet de bonheur.

Hi nice to meet you new subscriber Gail here ! Thanks for sharing this topic , i have maybe about 5 or 6 books i would never color in . Stock pages ones . I love the Age of Elegance one by Elle Marks so i put it in my cart and saw she has two more beautiful books ! I love detailed coloring pages . I know not for everyone . I love embellishing with all my glimmer and shimmer , glittery products . I cant believe you came accross momo girls bootleg , look up that book title amazon and agroud and notify other buyersit stolen art . There are a bunch of stolen art books by Camilla D'errico on Amazon now . Just like your book very unique style copied or even worse same pictures stolen and put on create space paper . If i had a channel i would do this regret list video plus add on books i accidentally ordered twice ! Like i put it in my cart twice and didnt notice until i received two in mail and i check and of course i never checked how many . And me being me bought books other places than Amazon and come home find out i already have it ! Lol Amazon tells you if you ordered it before . Funny because Momo girls of Music is one i ordered twice . I thought i bought the red one Girls of Poems so i ordered green one Girls of Poems ( or vice versa) off Alliexpress. Went to put it away and they nboth green . Not worth time or amount to ho through hassle returning to alliexpress . It still wrapped in plastic . So i like to de-stash duplicates and ones i know i personally will never color in . You should start a tag 10 or 5 books you regret buying ! Awesome video . Thanks for turning me on to Elle Marks !

If you are into Dogs - you might give Emma Raymond "Cute Dogs" a shot. The Pictures are not too crowded and when you check on Amazon you can see what you get. It is closer to realism than your "A Million Dogs" that has more the cartoony approach. But if you don´t mind that, "Lovely Dogs Coloring Book for Adults" by Amanda Neel or her other one "Lovely Puppies" might be worth a try for you. I don´t own this books so I can´t say anything about the paper.

That last book ., I couldn’t tell if that one 80’s rocker person was a guy or a girl lol 😝

I've only just discovered your channel today. I would say this video is a huge argument for not buying anything sight unseen unless you really don't mind getting the occasional turkey. Yes, we certainly do vary in our tastes, I loathe & detest "cute!" Someone waxing on about cute pictures will make me start making retching noises, but we all need to be able to say "you do you!" & let everybody enjoy their own style. I get the impression, that when you bought a lot of these books, you didn't have a clear knowledge of what you really liked in the way of subject matter. You may never get to the point where you like fussy detail in a picture, but as your confidence grows you will know how to cope with it better. Anyway, I'm now looking forward to seeing some artwork you do enjoy colouring!

I enjoyed this video. I didn’t love any of those books either, especially a million dogs and cats either 💅🏻😘🥴🇨🇦

Jade Summer is not a person BTW... it is a publishing company owned by two brothers and they are using various unnamed artists for their books

The positive I got from this video….I have some books in my Etsy cart, I’m going to DELETE EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW. 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

You have learned to ask more questions..."buyer beware"

Nursing homes or mental psychiatry wards use them too hun just thought Id let you know

The second book has stolen pictures in them too. I’ve just found your channel.

The second book stole images from Johanna Basford secret garden book

Wow that Etsy coloring book with all the girls colored in are also all Caucasian ! Im not a woman of color I’m Hispanic and light skinned but when I color I love to color my girls all skin tone colors not only girls that are of my own skin tone so that really upsets me to see the artist do that and they shouldn’t of been colored in the begin with.

The second book also has stolen artwork from other artists.

Good therapy……..

For me personally, I don’t care for the artwork in any of the ColorIt books. Every one that I’ve ordered, I was disappointed in the artwork so, I stopped buying them. I use the ones I have, to practice in. The paper is awesome and great for practice with alcohol markers because it’s so smooth!!!

The main focus of your video is you and your hands way too much.thumbs down