Dreamday Pattern Journals, from Laurence King Publishing, are another coloring book/journal hybrid, similar to the Coloring Notebook I reviewed a few months ago. Six designs are available, incorporating pages of beautiful patterns backed by blank pages inside a flexibound journal. The range of themes will please any designer or art history buff– from Mid-Century Modern/Scandinavian, to Renaissance Florence. The samples I received are Japanese and Moroccan designs, and Heraldic and Art Deco are also available.

The 6 1/2 x 9″ journals come shrinkwrapped, with a belly-band that shows some of the designs within. When you remove the belly-band, the cover is free of any branding. Even the barcode sticker is easily removable. The cover is a wrapped flexible material, with a contrasting color printed on the spine.

The texture of the cover slightly detracts from the intricacy of the pattern if you’re looking at it up close, but that is a minor quibble– overall the cover design is beautiful. The patterned endpapers inside are a nice touch too.

The first page provides a space to write your contact details, and the rest of the interior 108 pages is the patterned pages and blank pages. The signatures are stitched but the glue on the spine makes it difficult to open totally flat.

I wondered if the pattern pages would be usable for note-writing– some notebooks that have faint patterns on the pages can be written over without too much visual confusion, but in this case, I think it would be really distracting. The pattern pages are really for coloring and doodling. The paper is of good quality, though, and I found that most of my test pens and markers did not bleed or show through. This means you should be able to truly use the blank pages for writing and drawing and free-form doodling.

You can buy these on Amazon or in bookshops and art/stationery/gift stores, and at $14.95 they are a decent value and a nice gift. And I have three extra samples that I’ll give away, one each to three lucky winners selected from entries received in these ways:

On Twitter, tweet something containing “Dreamday Pattern Journal @LaurenceKingPub @NotebookStories”, and follow @LaurenceKingPub and @NotebookStories

On Facebook, “like” the Laurence King page and the Notebook Stories page and post something containing the words “Dreamday Pattern Journal” on the Notebook Stories page.

On your blog, post something containing the words “Dreamday Pattern Journal” and “Notebook Stories” and link back to this post.

The deadline for entry is Friday February 10, 2017 at 11:59PM, EST. Good luck everyone!
And please remember to check my posts on Facebook and Twitter for an announcement of the winner. Please allow a couple of weeks for me to check all the entries and determine the winners.