If you are familiar with the Dover name then you know that the company offers a wide variety of titles; everything from educational books to entertaining games. I have bought a lot of workbooks and activity kits from the site and have been impressed with their quality but it wasn't until I started buying a ton of the stained glass coloring books that I started looking into their craft themed titles. Most of the stencil books that they have are made from card stock; that keeps the price low but doesn’t offer you much in the way of replay value. If you are getting these for kids then the $1.00 to $1.50 price per book makes it great buy for art applications, paint, design or transfers you may be able to get three or four uses from each stencil before you need to pitch it.

Dover Publications: Fun with Dragon Stencils

First, a little about this series of stencil books. Almost all of them contain six basic stencil shapes in a similar theme. This one is about dragons. The books are smaller in size but features a single image on each page. You can remove them from the book so they are easier to use but I suggest using an X-Acto Knife to slice through the pages so they don't get damaged by scissors. Most of them have an average selling price of $1.00 to $1.50, that makes it an affordable thing to get for your little artist or something that can be trashed when you are done with a project. As I mentioned in the stained glass coloring book reviews, there are a lot of different things that you can do with these so don't feel that you have to be limited to using them on paper or with crayons.

One of the things that I dislike the most about these books is the lack of detail that is provided about them. The one sentence blurb that mentions that these are "Italian, French, Chinese, Swiss, and Bhutanese designs" doesn't tell you anything about the dragon designs. It also doesn't mention what the sixth dragon is, to satisfy those that may be curious, it's a medieval styled image but you do have to keep in mind that you are working with a stencil so the amount of detail that you are going to get from them is minimal. If you are a regular shopper at the Dover Publications website then you will be familiar with their products. Mostly everything is top notch but it would be nice to have some extra detail added to the section listings so you know exactly what you are getting when you order something.

As mentioned, there are six designs to the dragon stencils in this book. Each of them is taken from a region specific type of creature so all six of them have slight variations to them. The Chinese is ornate and resembles something that you would see at a traditional celebration, the Swiss is long and thin and the medieval one is the fiercest looking of the bunch. I wasn't familiar with Italian dragons but after doing some reading about them online I found out that they can be two or four footed creatures and have extremely short or unusually long tails. Out of the six designs the Buddhist [Bhutanese] offers you the most detail and is great if you are doing anything with spray paint or airbrushing. All six designs are nice but I am sure that once you flip through them you will find one or two of them that you fancy a bit more than others.

Unless you are someone that is really into dragons and knows the slight differences between them, you are going to look at the six designs and be pleased with them. If this is something that you are getting for kids to color with or draw with they won't be disappointed with the designs but they may end up destroying them in rather short order because they are made from card stock instead of plastic. The plastic stencils last longer and can be wiped off if you get paint or marker on them but they do tend to cost more. I have used a few of these dragon stencils on some wooden boxes that were tossed in the dumpster at the shop; a quick coat of paint, a stencil overlay and a few layers of sealer and I ended up with some rather innovative dragon egg nests for the RenRest.

The Bottom Line

I really liked the designs in this book and for $1.50 it was something that I was willing to take a risk on. Most of the other stencil books in this series are more than worth the price for crafts or for kids to play around with. Annabelle had a lot of fun with the fantasy and fairy tale themed books but shied away from the dragon ones because they were "all dragons". She was hoping to get something that was a little more girlie or offered something with a little more variety like the Medieval, Fairies & Elves or Christmas books. There are more than a few of these stencil books that contain dragons but so far I haven't come across any that are duplicates. If you are into dragons or want to do a border design with them, this stencil book can be a great help and if you goof up or destroy one of them, it doesn't cost a fortune to get another one.


As always, thanks for the visit…

~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~

© 2008 Freak369


Other dragon related things
Wizardology: The Book of The Secrets of Merlin
Dr. Ernest Drake's Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons
Dragonology Handbook: A Practical Course In Dragons
Green Dragon Fighter - Dragon Warrior - Dragon Rider
Who Wants A Dragon? - Behold .. The Dragons!

Medieval Madness, The Castle Cake & A Knight In Shining Armor! Yeah, I Am Insane!




Recommended: Yes