by Katie Leonard
on October 2016
Style: single page illustrations
Pages: 64
Format: Card cover, Glue Binding
A collection of whimsical guinea pigs in all types of poses and settings that will take you on a magical journey of pure escapism and delight.
This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the product. If you buy a book using that link, I will receive a small commission. This does not affect the price that you pay. Your support is very much appreciated x
The Magical Guinea Pig Colouring Book Video Review
I hope you enjoyed the video review of The Magical Guinea Pig Colouring Book by UK illustrator, Katie Leonard.
The Magical Guinea Pig Colouring Book Review
Regular readers know that I adore my whimsy.  Any type of whimsical or cutesy coloring book is likely to find a home on my shelves.  I can’t get enough of it. If It has cute animals in it then it is pretty well guaranteed that I will fall in love with it.
When I seen the cover of this book on Twitter I was so excited I am sure I squealed (just like a guinea pig).   I fell in love with it instantly.   Those dreamy pastels and those cute guinea pigs dressed up in little costumes had me smitten.
Katie Leonard, the illustrator of The Magical Guinea Pig Colouring Book runs a Guinea Pig blog in the UK with her sister, Stephanie.   As well as doling out advice on the care and maintenance of your guinea pig, providing fun things guinea pig related (guinea pig cupcake decorations anyone?) they also have an adorable shop.  This is where Katie has used her artistic skills to produce a range of guinea pig cuteness that will melt your heart.  There are adorable stickers, cute keyrings, cards and so much more!  It is all so pretty and whimsical that I often sneak off to stare it when I’m feeling a little blah.   Nothing will bring a smile to your face faster than when you see a guinea pig fairy 🙂
Cover & Layout
The Magical Guinea Pig Colouring Book is a smallish colouring book measuring in at approximately 21 cm x 21.5cm (approximately 8.5 in x 8.5 in).
The white cover is deliciously pretty decorated with an assortment of guinea pigs, all cute and fluffy and adorned with some type of accessory or decoration.   The white wraps to the spine where the title has been added in pink
The cover is matte laminate and comes pre printed in color.    The back cover features background of dusty pink with a cute guinea pig with his pencils and a message from the illustrator.
Layout
The illustrations are all presented as single sided and portrait orientated.     The paper is white and not quite a medium quality paper.  As the images are one per page, you can tuck paper between the page you are working on and the next page, to avoid damaging it.
Ancillary Pages
At the start of the book you will find the title page reproduced for you to color in.   A text based copyright page follows. This is a great spot to test out your mediums and see how they react with the paper and your coloring style.  A cute little nameplate page follows.  The last ancillary page is the line art for the back cover of the book.
Illustrations
If you are a lover of whimsy and cute coloring books then this one may delight you and have you squealing! You will find fluffy guinea pigs watering the garden, mermaid guinea pigs, flying guinea pigs and feasting guinea pigs.  It seems that all the possible representations of a guinea pig have been imagined including the Easter Bunny/Guinea Pig and Santa!
These guinea pigs lead an active social life flying kites, hot air ballooning, going to the fun fair and indulging in icecream sundaes.   It’s not all fun and games though, they do get their exercise chasing butterflies, delivering the mail, flying light planes and cake decorating.    At the end of the day though, there is nothing like having a nap in some flowers before the next days activities which might include going to the park, building sandcastles or going to school.    These guinea pigs have such an active life, I’m a little bit jealous 🙂
Katie has drawn the line art in a lovely, black crisp line and generally uses a medium weight.    For those colorists with a minor visual impairment you will find the images easy to see to color in.  Colorists that have health obstacles, that make coloring in small details challenging, will be pleased with the amount of large open spaces on the image for ease of coloring.
The bulk of the art work has been well positioned and centered on the page avoiding the tricky spine area.   There are a handful of images where the elements do run to the spine area but some gentle, but loving pushing, should make these guinea pigs lay down flat enough to color easily.
Some of the art work is very detailed and contains a lot of elements to color in.   Other images are more simple outlines that would make them suitable to color for colorists of all ages and skill levels.    You will notice that if you visit the Guinea Pig Shop how beautiful these simple outlined pieces look when colored in.  I have posted a comparison picture above.
I am not sure if Katie colors the images herself on the store, but I would love to see a tutorial of coloring the guinea pigs in.  UPDATE!!!!!!  SQUEAL!  Katie is going to do a coloring tutorial!  I can’t wait for this!
For colorists that love doing backgrounds you will be pleased with the amount of white space on the images where you can add elaborate background pizzazz.
The Magical Guinea Pig Colouring Book Image Gallery
Please click on the image to see a more detailed view.
[foogallery id=”4626″]Where to buy The Magical Guinea Pig Colouring Book
The Magical Guinea Pig Colouring Book is printed in the UK and is available from the Guinea Pig Wheekly Website here.   Guinea Pig Wheekly ship internationally. Update: – You can now get your Guinea Pig fix at Etsy as well here.
I purchased my book on pre -order as it was not yet published.   Had it been published, at the time of ordering, I probably would have bought 2, it’s just sooo cute!   You will need all your self control when you visit the shop, if you are a whimsy lover.  I spent a long time drooling over all the pretty pictures!
According to my email, the Magical Guinea Pig Colouring Book was shipped on 28 October 2016 and arrived in Australia on 10 November, 2016.   She was wrapped in lovely pink tissue and protected in her own personalized envelope, with a sturdy card insert to avoid the book bending.
I had thought the personalized envelope was a stamp or printed envelope.  Katie emailed me to advise that she actually hand draws the envelope!  Amazing and super cute!
Happy coloring x
Lea
Hello lovely lea! This is such a beautiful blog post thank you so much for writing it and it’s truly made my day even more sparkly and magical. I hope it brings you much happiness and enjoyment as it did for me to create it, there’s nothing more fulfilling than seeing so many people made happy through my whimsical guineapig illustrations filled with goodness. Katie x p.s I’ll be sure to make some videos ! What a fab idea!
Thank you Katie! I’m so super excited that you are going to make a tutorial video! I can’t wait to see how you color the piggies! Please let me know when you post them so I can watch them avidly and update the post with that information! I’m still hoping for colorable Christmas cards …2017?