Making Friends with Anxiety: A Calming Colouring Book by Sarah Rayner & Jules Miller

Summary
Current Price: £3.99
Number of Pages: 68 
Size: 21 x 21cm 
Paper colour: White
Paper surface: Smooth 
Paper thickness: Average
Linework: Fine​ 
Perforated: No 
One sided: Yes 
Binding: Glue 
Drawings go into the spine: No ​
Waterbased pen bleed: No

As my followers will know, suffering from anxiety and depression was a big catalyst in starting colouring and indeed creating this blog. I know an awful lot of people colour for the same reasons, and many colouring books profess to evoke mindfulness and calm in their owners. Making Friends with Anxiety is different, though. This colouring book not only contains images to colour but words of advice and wisdom to really help you understand and deal with your feelings. The colouring book is a companion to the highly recommended self-help book (which I also have a copy of) and includes excerpts from the book for you to ponder over whilst colouring. Due to the sheer amount of books I've had to review I am only just embarking on the book itself, but as this blog might reach people with dehabilitating anxiety I shall be doing my first non-colouring book review on it in the near future so watch this space!

Back to the colouring book! The illustrations all represent the advice given on the opposite page, for example: outdoor pictures in the section that talks about getting back to nature and gardening to help alleviate feelings of panic, a page full of keys in the part that encourages you to unlock the mind, etc. There are no abstract lines or eye-crossing geometrical patterns here; every image is rooted in life and realism, with pertinent quotes to inspire.

The facing page of each image is text, so if you just love the illustrations and want to buy it just for colouring, you'll be able to use any pens you want as bleed isn't an issue. The illustrations are fairly simple without a huge amount of detail (which can be stressful on the eye to even look at sometimes), and feel very comforting and sweet. Jules Miller has done a fantastic job illustrating Sarah's words, both of them creating a really theraputic and helpful colouring book for people with anxiety and indeed any colourist.

Here is my finished picture :)

I was given this book in exchange for an honest review. You can find it on Amazon here:

Making Friends with Anxiety: A Calming Colouring Book