Last year, I put together a body-positive coloring book called “Big-Bellied Merbabes.” It was a project inspired my obsession with mermaids and “Fat Ladies in Spaaaaace” by Theo Nicole Lorenz. It was mostly a low-stress project for fun, as most of the design and illustration work I’d done that year did not allow for much creativity. I rounded up a bunch of my friends to model for me, printed out a bunch of copies, and spent some quality time with a long reach stapler.

I figured I’d just sell a few copies at my artist alley table at GeekGirlCon ’13 and gift the rest to friends. I ended up selling out of my first run of copies by the end of October! I was not expecting the coloring books to receive such a tremendous response. Just goes to show how thirsty we are for body-positive media!

Fast forward a year later when I received a message from a friend (who had previously told me he was using the coloring books to teach body diversity in his class) saying he was offering extra credit to students in exchange for a colored page from the book! I wanted to share a few of my favorites:

How awesome are these?! I’m so stoked that this coloring book is being used as a tool to teach kids about body positivity! Hope you enjoy these as much as I did!