Colouring Pens or Pencils

[CremeBrulee]

I have put away some lovely colouring books for the DC (8 and 13) for Christmas including this Harry Potter one and some other adult style ones.

I want to get some good colouring pens or pens for them to use with these books. I keep looking but am torn between pens and pencils and the vast price differences from low to high end sets.

Can anyone suggest a good quality set or two smaller sets they can share with a good range of colours?

What about Sharpies colouring pens? You can get big sets with every colour imaginable just don't pay full price for them!

These are the ones I have, lovely set of colours and nice thin nibs, had them a year or so and they're still going strong.

I would get a nice set of faber castell classic colour pencils. You can't go wrong with anything from faber castell, really good quality products even their cheaper range.
I have the Harry Potter book and don't dare use pens in case they bleed.

The Works has a wooden chest with different pens/ pencils etc in it for £10.

Thanks all. Some great suggestions.

Stabilo cappi

They are all attached by a ring in the lid which means you never loose either them or the lids. They do a set of 24 as well.

Pens or pencils are both fine for colouring. You will be able to get more out of a smaller colour range of pencils than pens, iyswim, but a more uniform richness of colour with decent pens. For pens the Staedtler triplus fibre tip pens are very good - they don't dry out easily and last for a long time, so are good if a child occasionally forget to out the top back on. For pencils, you can't go wrong with Faber-castell or Derwent - you can get away with having only 12 or 24 colours in these and still get a great variation of colour. With pencils the richness of pigment is the most important thing. Don't whatever you do get one of those gigantic cheap wooden box sets with dozens of pens and pencils in - you are paying for a hefty box filled with poor quality stuff. My daughter asked my mum for quality pencils last year and my mum got her one of these boxes. Even my mum admitted afterwards she was tempted by the big box but in hindsight the pigment quality was absolutely rubbish. My daughter still uses my pencils in preference.

I have these and they work well for me and 6yo DS. Strong and nice range of colours. Box is sturdy too, without being OTT.

Definitely not Sharpies. They bleed through the paper and ruin everything.

Stabilo Cappi are brilliant, I got my kids a set last year. Lovely to colour with and the only set EVER to still have their lids a year on. It's like some sort of Christmas miracle.

No to Sharpies. They will go through and ruin the other side. I'm currently using WH Smith watercolour pencils.

I've got some Stabilo Woody 3 in 1s for DD who is 3.8.

Right, have these in my shopping basket:

Staedler Noris Club Pens

Staedler Noris Pencils

Do think these will be OK?

I would recommend either Steadler Triplus finerliners or Stabilo Pen 68. I have both and use them for work, when designing, and when colouring ds steals them too and has his own set of Triplus now.

I would also go with something like Faber Castel pencils, both me and ds have our own sets of these.