Get Your Coloring On

School is stressful. Relationships are stressful. Basically, life is stressful. Video games can help unwind some times and, personally, I love a good dystopian book or movie for relaxing, but there's a craze that's exploded this year that's just as good: coloring. Coloring between the lines is no longer for elementary kids--it's moved its way all the way up through teenagers to adulthood. Not gonna lie, some of these coloring books and sheets are super intense.

It's no longer about coloring Pooh to be gold with a red shirt, or making Pete the Cat blue with yellow eyes. These coloring pages are about completely forgetting real life while you sit down and color these small details in however your heart feels at that current moment. These allow you to mindless go through and be creative with pens, markers, pencils or even crayons.

The coolest part about this? You can print off pages online for free. There are so many resources and people designing these for anyone to use. The rest is all up to your imagination. Well and, frankly, even if you don't have an imagination to speak of, it's therapeutic to just mindlessly color in the empty spaces.

I personally enjoy these for times where I feel really anxious about something--especially travel. I'm getting ready to go on a trip now as I type this, and these have been perfect for letting go and escaping the world for 10 minutes.

I know a lot of you have finished your exams for the first half of the year. While I'm not too sure how strict teachers are today, when I was in school, we were allowed to bring work to do after we finished each test. For me personally, coloring something as intense as this would've been a good way to clear my head for the next test.

I'm not sure which brilliant human came up with the idea to make such intricate coloring pages, but they deserve 5 gold stars. Coloring and art has always been something I've enjoyed, but I can't draw decently at all, so coloring is really all I have.

Have you hopped on board this hype train? If so, what do you enjoy coloring with most? Pens? Pencils? Markers? I definitely prefer colored pencils, but I think markers and pens can create some awesome almost stained glass-like art.