Garden Boteh - Art Therapy

Initial review and first piece from Art Therapy - Mandalas.

In advance please forgive me for any errors, I'm running on 29 hours of work and 10 hours of sleep in 48 hours - eeep! I didn't want to lag with my blog, although it's still young I'm enjoying posting regularly and want to ensure I stay on track.
I finished a piece last night from the Art Therapy - Mandalas book I purchased recently, so here we go!

AT Mandalas is the same type as AT Enchanted Forest (see here). So we have the large size, 100 designs within, hard cover, and smooth paper which holds ink well.
I plan to review this book a little better further down the track once I've worked through it some more; however I will say now that I am unhappy with this book as I felt the cover wasn't a clear reflection of the interior designs.

The pieces within are a more traditional mandala design, where the cover (to me) seems more simplistic. Many of the designs within are quite lovely; but others are covered up by deities, bulls and elephants. There's nothing wrong with those as they fit the aesthetic -  it's just not my 'thing'. However, some pieces within are flat out garden style floral pieces that simply feel awkward and thrown in for the sake of filling pages..

The piece I finished last night is what I would call a garden style boteh. I will freely admit I am not overly familiar with proper pattern terms, so forgive me for errors - it's all a learning process :)
So we see a range of floral pieces accompanied by flowing damask styles and some small paisely/boteh designs. I went with a colour theme that was not a natural one for me, and I did like the end result. Unfortunately I have noticed the Staedtler Triplus 0.3mm Fineliner in dark green (primary background shade) does transfer to the fingertips from what I assume could be a minute amount of moisture from sweat or oils. To avoid this I was cautious to place a napkin over the areas I wanted to rest my fingers; this solved the problem easily and i did not have to worry about smudging my completed areas.

The pens I used for this piece are the Staedtler Triplus 0.3mm Fineliners, Smiggle Gel Pen in a neon and a pastel, and a Stabilo Point 88 0.4mm Fineliner.

The Mandala basics:
Available: Yes
Price: $20-$25 AUD
Size: A hefty Hardback - 128 pages at 219mm x 294mm x 20mm, weighing 860g.
Paper: Smooth quality, thick, colour does not show through to other side. No bleeding.
Designs: Not what I expected, as above, however that is not all the author/publisher's error. Per my personal taste, I prefer geometric designs so was after simplistic mandalas perhaps with some floral aspects; however this is mostly traditional styles with some obscure full-garden pieces that feel last-minute.
Tools: So far I have only used fine-tipped pens. I would recommend using fine-tipped pens, including fine-tipped felt pens, as lines do show easily.
Would I recommend it? Yes if you like traditional mandala designs.

Thank you for reading!