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OUR STORY
The Coloring Hive is a pandemic baby.
Incubated in the mind of a neurodivergent millennial experiencing an existential crisis, it began like most babies do - in the bedroom.
Well, not like you'd think. It began in a dream. . .
In days, the house was covered in scribbled scraps of paper and post-it notes.
Book stores were visited. Coloring books were studied with obsessive intent.
While coloring and art therapy were favored past times, it never occurred to our founder to publish them until her old mentor visited in a dream.
A Canadian, red-haired woman many lovingly compared to the iconic Miranda Priestley from The Devil Wears Prada, this mentor owned and operated an award winning magazine publisher for twenty incredible years. It was a business magazine - not fashion - however she had a fierce sense of style and a designer shoe collection to die for.
She loved art, storytelling, editing and managing a full magazine press. This was where our founder got her start in publishing - got bitten by the bug, so to speak. However, it wasn't all roses. Her mentor gave wisdom and pushed the team to new heights every day, but this couldn't stave off the wolves at the door.
The industry had changed. After another recession, a hit from digital advertising and a customer base unable to pay their ad bills, the magazine fell into irreperable debt. Perhaps she played the game with too much kindness, unlike her fictional counterpart.
The mentor gambled everything on one final attempt to save her company, and lost everything.
Everything ;
She left behind a secret legacy no one knew about until her funeral.
You see, this highly intelligent, highly fashionable Canadian publisher had quietly taken many mentees under her wing, most of them young women.
She was much more uplifting than Miranda Priestley's character to those women, and our founder was lucky enough to be one of them, to learn the ins and outs of the publishing industry from a master of the craft before she passed away.
After her mentor's passing in 2017, our founder floundered along professionally, unsure what to do with herself. If someone larger than life like her Miranda couldn't navigate the changes in the publishing sector in a recession, how could she possibly hope to succeed?
Then, one night when the cold late winter winds howled at the walls, she fell asleep thinking of her mess of a career, health and life.
Somewhere between dreaming and waking, she heard a familiar, long missed voice who's bite was always softened with love. The sound was as real as the hair on her head.
"Be Curious. Be Bold. Be Kind. You have all the pieces, you just need to be jump."
Dubious faith notwithstanding, our founder fell into publishing her first journals and coloring books in the fall of 2020 on the advice of whispered words from a beloved ghost.
Since then, we've published 20+ coloring books and counting with a small creative team of freelancers, each of whom share the same purpose and desire to make the world better through publishing what we see as art therapy books, for a variety of people from around the world. Like our founder's mentor, we adore artists and care deeply about crediting them for their work, while also providing opportunities for exposure. It's a sacred duty as publisher, and one we don't take lightly.
Our brand is rooted in advocating for mental health, and while coloring books may seem like simple joys, they are more than that to so many people who rely on them to ease the stress and anxiety of living in a Devil Wears Prada World.
Coloring books also help developing children - especially neurodivergent kiddos - hone coping skills to carry them through life with more ease.
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