No, neither did I until I came across The Tracing Co, on Twitter.
My guest blogger is 29-year-old Jason Lewis, from San Antonio in Texas, who founded activity book brand The Tracing Co. His primary job is in education, where he's a high school economics teacher, and football and soccer coach.
Over to Jason:
Instead of attempting to compete with the thousands of authors that had already created numerous editions of every type of coloring book possible, I decided to create something that would offer a different product to the same market of consumers.
Arts and crafts were not my thing. As the son of two teachers and coaches, I grew up in a gym, learning the art of basketball and soccer. Most craft activities required too many materials and were too messy. The simplest art that we all do is draw.
However, I have a hard enough time drawing a stick figure. I always admired how artists could draw such neat, detailed images. It was something that intrigued me so much that I decided to make an activity book that would allow someone like me to draw a picture that only the best artists can create. Fast forward one year and I have now drawn numerous pictures like the one you see below.
The way it works is simple. The book will give multiple pages of grouped lines and patterns. Place the same piece of tracing paper over each page and trace the lines. When all of the lines from each group are traced, the result is a beautiful, professional quality image.
After completing my first design and marveling at what I, the one that struggled to draw a stick figure, had drawn, I realized that my books had more to offer than a simple addicting hobby. After focusing on the many meandering lines and shapes, I felt a soft sense of relaxation and a strong feeling of accomplishment.
When I thought back to my process of pen moving against paper, I could recall the order of various patterns. The accuracy of the last set of lines was much improved from the first set I attempted. It was at this point that I knew I had created a tool that could help people improve their mental health. I had created the next big thing, combining arts and crafts with mental therapy.
We know and are excited that we have only scratched the surface on the significant benefits that our activity books can offer. The more feedback we receive, the better that we can improve our books and the more validation that other potential customers, who could use these, get. We invite you to search for us on Amazon.
We have published three books: “Bloom” consists of floral mandalas, “Wild Life” consists of zentangle-style animals, and “Believe” is a Christmas-themed tracing book. If we are lucky enough to call you a customer, please let us know what you think. We welcome all feedback, as we are always looking to improve our product.
* The three books are available on Amazon, here.