Childhood memories....from August of 2011
Color By Number - Memories of Paradise
Do you remember color by number? It was really popular in the 1950's and early 1960's, when I was growing up. You can still find color by number in paint today. But what my family loved was the Venus Paradise sets. They were color pencil color by numbers. They had sets geared to all ages - from children old enough to color to adults.
The pencils were numbered, and you got the pencils you needed for your set with the set. My favorite was #7, Peacock Blue. You can even find the list of colors online (except for two "mystery colors"). It would seem that some older artists miss them, too - they were high quality but as a child, I just took them for granted.
My Dad and I would color together. I would have my child's set and he an adult set. I remember one in particular, set with famous buildings. I remember him in particular working on a Taj Mahal picture. I looked at him color with great concentration. He put wax paper on top of the part of the picture he had completed so it would not smear.
His picture had so much detail. You could barely make out some of the numbers in the small portions. But I would grow up one day and be able to do complicated pictures just like my Dad!
Except I lost interest, until my son was born.
I went to all the stores (when he was old enough to color) and no one had them. In fact, I couldn't find any kind of color by number pencil art set, period.
Venus Paradise is out of business. And, I couldn't even find a set on eBay (I did find a couple of auctions for the pencils.)
The good news is that there is a pencil color by number set out there now. Better yet, the people who own the business remember Venus Paradise. So perhaps a new generation of children will remember pencil by number sets fondly.
In writing this post, I find my spouse remembers the sets too. He thinks when he retires, it might be fun to buy one. But sadly, this is something I'm not sure will ever return to favor for the general population.
So....do you remember Venus Paradise?
My Paradise Venus sets were among my favorites, too. (I still need the numbers to paint a picture...) Being the lefty (in oh, so many ways) that I was, I also needed a pencil sharpener, since I was always breaking off the points...
ReplyDelete(Don't ask what I did with the TV show Winky Dink, when my parents hid my plastic sheets!)