I’d taken a number of medium-sized Wild Gears patterns, scanned them at high resolution, cleaned them up in Photohsop and shrunk them. Then I arranged them on a page in a triangular shape like a Christmas tree. When I printed it off, I thought, “It’s too fine, too small. Who’s going to want to color that?”

But then I put on my mother’s old reading glasses and started coloring it. I tried my fine-tip felt pens and some gel pens, and decided it was OK after all.

I’m a long way from done, however. It’s kind of like a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. We do one a year, over the Christmas holidays. I may not be doing a jigsaw puzzle this year; I’ll be too busy coloring.

You can too. The page is available to buy as a printable instant download.

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I do know, however, that if your small gear isn’t much smaller than the hole in the larger gear you’re using, you get loops. This pattern has lots of loops, as it uses a #40 gear in a #45 hole. The larger wheel is 140 and the large ring is 180. All except the 40 are in Wild Gears’ Full Page Gear Set. The 40 came from the Plentiful Gear Set.

It’s fun to watch the pattern emerge, so I made a video of it (below). I messed it up 5 times before I gave up and used the blooper anyway. I tried again without the camera running and got it perfect the first time. Go figure.

The first time I discovered this combination of gears, I found the pattern interesting and coloured it. So I made it in black as a colouring page, and here are some results. A couple are done by an Australian correspondant, Suze.

In case you’d like to try colouring it yourself, you can buy the colouring page as an instant printable. Send me your pictures and I’ll add them to the gallery.

In the video, I’m using a Micron 05 pen (.45mm). This is a pricier pen than most that I use, but I wanted some archival ink to create more serious artwork with my Wild Gears and Spirograph. Christmas is coming, after all.

Colouring page available here.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

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It took 2½ hours to complete the intricate colouring page, which you can buy here if you want to try it yourself.

I had planned to speed up the video, because no one wants to watch me colour that long. My software (Adobe Premiere Elements) can speed up my footage 8 times. It made me look like a colouring whiz, but it was still 20 minutes long. It needed to be under 5 minutes. What to do, what to do?

So I cut out bits – lots of bits – and replaced them with a “clock wipe” transition to indicate the passage of time.

I used glitter gel pens for the foreground patterns, to make them pop, some metallic gel pens for highlights (the silver can actually cover the black lines), and dollar-store markers for the rest. At the end, I shot some footage at an angle to see the glitter catching the light. We didn’t have glitter or metallic pens when I was a kid.

Such frenzied activity required a fast, jazzy soundtrack, so that’s what I gave it. Sorry it isn’t very relaxing! But I’m getting over the cold, and at least I have something to show for it.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

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Then the fun began. I have to say I was surprised at how much I got into it. At first I wanted to give each “square” (never really square) a different colour from its neighbour as in a patchwork quilt. Then my sister Pam visited. She found a human-like figure in one of the designs, and brought it out with her colour choices and thickened some lines….

Well, duh! She showed me that you can take this much farther, if you have a true artist’s eye. Colour outside the lines!

Anyway, here are some examples that I’ve done. If you find this inspiring, you can buy my colouring pages right here. Give me encouragement and I’ll make more!

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I made a downloadable, high-resolution, printable set of coloring pages, “Wreaths and Stars“ which you can now (July 2024) buy from this site. It comes to you as a high-resolution PDF file with 12 printable coloring pages – one for each of the 12 days of Christmas, if you wish.

Each pattern has space around it so you can cut it out and use on Christmas cards, decorations, gift tags, gift wrap, etc. Try printing on vinyl for window clings. There are lots of different materials available for inkjet and laser printers now. Print each page as many times as you want.

The designs were made in black ink using Wild Gears, scanned at high resolution, cleaned up in Photoshop, arranged on pages and made into PDFs.

We’ve been having a lot of fun coloring up the prototypes. If you like to color, I’m sure you’ll love coloring these SpiroMandala designs.

See all my coloring pages here.

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