All posts tagged: Art Supplies

Have Art Supplies, will Travel.

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Every time I travel I give a lot of thought to my art supplies and not nearly as much thought to how many t shirts I will need! Clean shirts, jeans and a nice scarf. Clothes done.  Art supplies need way more thought. What will I be able to do? How big do I want my sketchbook? What paper is in it?  Wet media or dry?  Will I be able to use watercolors or acrylic paints?  How about water-soluble pencils? Some things always travel with me, my mini Moleskine Art Plus sketchbook, a Micron pen or three and my trusty Pentel Pocket Brush pen with a spare ink cartridge.  For this trip to New York City, I have added some Derwent Inktense pencils in a few favorite colors and a water soluble graphite pencil.  In fact as I write this, I have remembered that if I want to use water soluble pencils, I am going to need a water brush, so in that goes! The Field Notes book is for jotting down ideas and anything …

‘I Like’ Friday

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Lots of things to like this fine Friday! A modest trip to Art Mart to get some book tape.  Came out with deep violet high flow acrylic, gold fluid acrylic a new sepia pen and a Jon Snow key chain (for my teen).  Any art shop which sells Funko Pop key chains has my vote! Moon phase stickers from Stickerdoodles. I keep borrowing this fabulous book from the library, it might be time to buy it! Stunning cigarette cards from the gorgeous shop of Beets and Birch.  I adore these cards as I already have lots which my grandma gave me.  Mine are a mix of tea cards and cigarette cards. They were given away in each pack of tea or cigarettes until the 1970’s I think.  Grandma kept all hers and gave them to me in the 1980’s carefully kept in a ‘British Home Stores’ bag! I am very pleased to have these cards to add to my collection. The new Art Journaling magazine has two of my Get Messy friends inside it’s covers …

‘I Like’ Fridays. The travel art journal and supplies edition.

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  Before I went on holiday to Cape Cod I used the covers of an old book called ‘Cape Cod Folks’ to make myself a journal filled with watercolor paper, handmade blue paper, kraft paper and some pages from an old dictionary. I am really enjoying using handmade journals because I get to choose the paper, the size of the pages and the overall size of the journal.  Full credit to the Get Messy Bookbinding class for teaching me all I know about making journals.  It really is a great class.  If you want a good book with clear instructions I recommend Esther K Smith’s book called How to Make Books. I have borrowed it many times from the library. Once I was on vacation, it honestly took me a couple of days to get going in my art journal. It would have been easy to leave it in the drawer. I am so glad I didn’t. The first spread I made was awful and again I could have left it in the drawer.  Then …

‘I Like’ Friday -the art supplies edition

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Art supplies how I love them! This week I have been using all kinds of things and I thought I would share my favorites with you.  Hopefully you can share some of your favorites or coveted supplies (I have plenty of ‘wish list’ stuff myself). Paints – I often start with a background using acrylic paints in my art journal which is a good and a bad thing. Good because I don’t have a scary white page glaring at me, and I have something to work with and on. Bad because if I want to sketch something on the page, there is no erasing, no going back.  Of course there is more paint to go over a mistake if necessary! I bought a set of pearlescent watercolors this week and I like the subdued colours and the gentle sparkle. Kind of what I aim for in life – subdued colours and a gentle sparkle!  Now I am after some metallic watercolors which look fabulous. Journals – I always have more than one sketchbook on the …

Art Journaling Supplies I Can’t do Without.

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Art supplies might very well be my favorite thing to shop for.  They are always colorful, always useful, no worries that they won’t fit (they always fit somewhere!), always make me happy.  I literally (not really, that would be weird) skip home from the art shop.  Maybe I am skipping in my head though as I think about my new supplies and how I can introduce them to my existing supplies. Some of my essential supplies don’t even come from the art or craft store, they come from estate sales or thrift shops.  I am talking about the paper and even some of the sketchbooks I use. Oftentimes I will print on paper from an old book or music script, or I will use the whole book as a sketchbook. Another paper I adore is dry deli paper which is not from the art store either (I get mine from Amazon).  It is the paper which you pick out your pastries at the supermarket with or that your sandwich might be wrapped in.  I am …

‘I like’ Friday. Art Journaling Supplies.

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I have been reading a lot lately about the supplies people like to use in their art journaling. These posts are inspiring and helpful all at once, so I thought I would add my two pennies worth and write a post about what I like to use. As I have only been art journaling deliberately for a couple of months, I suspect the supplies I rely on will change and develop over the next months.  I look forward to how my supplies evolve. Of course the first thing we need to journal is a sketchbook.  I have filled a Strathmore 500 series book which has very nice heavy paper and I have just started a Ranger Dylusions sketchbook which has heavy paper too, but is a little thicker.  I can’t wait to fill it up! These are both larger books, 8″x 11″ give or take a quarter of an inch. I like to have lots of space to play with, so I like this size. Pens pens pens.  I use Micron pens in almost everything …

A month of Tinkersketch drawing challenge

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Through the month of February I joined in with Rachelle from Tinkerlab for the Tinkersketch drawing challenge.  Prompts were provided along with ideas for each day, sketchbooks were grabbed and art was created. I decided to use an old book discarded from the library as my sketchbook and I had filled it by the end of the month.  I didn’t use every page because I used all kinds of media which invariably ruined the next page or two. Here are some of my favorite pages from my little vintage book as sketchbook.  I quite like that I ended up with lots of bugs scuttling across my pages! Day 2. Mirror. Day 7. Repetition. Day 5. Tiny Doodle. Day 11. Stamp. I used a squashed cardboard roll to stamp hearts. Day 14. Hearts. Day 15. Sky.  Watercolor with masking fluid and pen and a collaged moon. Day 19. Junk Mail. Day 27. Mismatched. Day 29. Torn Paper. The final prompt which was ‘torn paper’ was completed on the very last page of the book. Thanks to Rachelle …

‘I like’ Friday. The Art Inspiration Edition.

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I was chatting on the interwebs to the fabulous and talented Jeanette from Craftwhack blog this week and we were talking about which sketchbooks we use and which we like best.  I am a bit of a sketchbook junkie, but I usually end up filling the same ones. I would love to have a single sketchbook and fill it full up with artistic-ness and brilliance.  So, off I go to find the perfect sketchbook for this task, the book with the correct paper weight for each idea, the best size of paper and of course the ideal colour pages.  With that all in mind, I would need a sketch book with cardstock, sketching paper, watercolour paper, tracing paper and marker paper.  Of course I would also need pages of all sizes from tiny squares to big double spreads and a selection of paper from black to white via kraft. Not going to happen, unless I make my own (this I have thought about and it may happen!). I really am quite happy hopping from one …