WIP: Water Col-O-Ring testing

A few weeks ago I received a set of amazing shimmering watercolors I purchased from Cloves and Honey and finally got around playing with them. The Cup of Roses is a stamp I have received from my challenge winnings from STAMPlorations a few months ago and used an embossing resist technique to test the water colors. They are so vibrant and wonderful! The paper I used here is Van Gogh cold pressed 25% cotton water color paper which I purchased at TOWI in Leiden. Such a wonderful local art supply store I frequent and they have hidden gems! I also bought a bunch of old stock Schmincke water colors which I integrated in the palette above. 

I was pleasantly surprised how the paper held up! Minimum buckling/warping, great flow of water and workable time is great as well! By the way, that tin is a DIY watercolor palette. And the tin was given away with a female hygine product! I think I am making so much better use of it now ;) I filled it with different brand watercolors. This size can fit 20 half pans to fill up the tin or 16 half pan and your travel water brush. THIS FITS IN YOUR BACK POCKET OR A SMALL PURSE! I'm trying to find a minimalist way of traveling with art supplies but still with enough colors on hand for our up coming vacation and I think I have found it :)  Super excited to bring it with me on vacay!

Also another paper test I was looking forward to, is this Col-O-Ring by Ana  from the Well Appointed Desk. Initially this booklet is made to use for your ink tests, mainly for fountain pen ink swabs to see how the properties of each ink behave. There are all sorts of great reviews out there and I esp. love this video from my friend Azizah (Gourmet Pens) which shows you how you can make ink swabs and how to use this little booklet for that. Because I have stocked up on Maruman Word Cards when they announced the discontinuation, I thought I could test and try different things with this beautiful hand cut and letter pressed booklet. So I did a watercolor and mixed media test over on my Instagram stories, showed the work in progress of the above little mixed media piece, which I called the 'SS Regina braving the storm'. Made the little boat from vintage postage stamps and I loved that the word Regina was used to indicate our queen back then. The paper holds up to mixed media quite well, I was very impressed to see! So you can try this booklet for different things also, little water color or Mixed Media work and even embroidery (I have used some black embroidery thread between the sails and the paper doesn't rip what I poked it with an embroidery needle!) 

I absolutely LOVED playing around and testing these new products and am happy to support these small business owners whom are providing stellar quality products! 

I'm also happy that the Col-O-Ring is now also accessibly available in the EU at Fontoplumo and thanks again Frank for providing this booklet for review :) 

Sharing these desk shots over at Julia's Stamping Ground for WOYWW#427 - have a look and see more shared desk stories and maybe even share your own work in progress/desk shot to fellow deskers :) Missed you gals and I'll be over for a visit shortly!

Thank you for stopping by and have an awesome day!

Art Snacks November 2016 Box

It took a week longer to arrive than the last two boxes and therefore this review is up a bit later because I could not find the proper time to test it until recently. But when I did. wow this month's box  is a great one with a lot of fun items to try out!

The content of the art snacks box of november contained not 4 but 5 items. The bonus item being the Stonehenge water color paper pad you see on the left, which I am very pleased with. In fact, I am pleased with the whole box! The other items are; plumchester brush pen in black, the Molotown aqua pump softliner in brown, pentel sign pen in green and the mixed media art spray in bordeaux/burgundy. Read more about the products on the artsnacks page HERE.

My first test was just trying out the pens and spray in my Nuuna test notebook to see the colors and how the pens write. The Molotow is refillable which is nice and it is definitely a soft brush. The plumchester is an Art Snacks exclusive as they are developing their own line of art supplies. I find this brush works best on smoother paper to get even writing from it. The pentel sign pen is an oldie but goodie! I used them back in highschool, which is like ... no let's not go there, but sooo many years ago now. The spray creates a nice spatter effect and dries up a nice bordeaux color. Time to test it out on the Stonehenge paper!

I took one of my fave stencils at the moment, the  seed pods from Clarity, placed it over the paper and sprayed the mixed media ink over it. It's acrylic ink so it dried pretty quickly on the paper.

But it stayed wet enough on the plastic of the stencil for a negative print and when dried it was easily removed off the stencil with a wet baby wipe.

What I like A LOT about this Stonehenge paper size is the fact it's almost the size of an ATC/ACEO (just a bit taller) and can fit in the 9 pocket sleeves (for a pocket letter for instance) and those trading card protection sleeves! What a great size to play around with! The paper is pretty awesome too and I made the below ACEO/ATC with all the products from the november box.

The spray stays on beautifully and the molotow & pentel brush colors blend nicely together with a waterbrush. I used the white gel pen from last month's box to highlight the word "grow" which I have written with the Plumchester brush pen. 

 A note on the international subscription plan; The box is 34$ including international shipping and what is really considerate of art snacks is that they tick the box as gift so in process you won't have to pay for customs charges upon arrival! They do this without asking as an extra service for their international customers (next to tracking) and is really very thoughtful! I surely do appreciate it :)

Hope this review was useful if you are planning on an art snacks subscription, or any of the products mentioned. The december box shipped already and I am curious what I'll find in there. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

namasté

Spotlight Stationery August 2016 Box Review

In my review of the July Box from Spotlight Stationery I mentioned I was eager to see the contents of the august box and then decide if I was going to subscribe to it (bi)monthly or not. It arrived a few weeks ago and finally have the time to review it here. If you are cleaver, you can guess the theme by the contents above :) Shown are postcards from artists at National Star and the note card is from The City Works.

On the appearance of the box: It actually fits through the mail slot which I really appreciate because there is no hassle to pick it up at the post office if the delivery was made when I was not at home to receive it! Also it's always so nicely packaged on the inside with the Spotlight Stationery logo sticker, slogan stamp and gorgeous blue tissue wrapping paper.

What I also definitely appreciate the personal touch with an envelope in my fave color addressed to me (also handwritten!) I am sure that using my fave shade of turquoise for an envelope was a total coincidence, as they used it (I think) because it's the second color in their logo :)

On to the content: This month's theme is, as stated on the explanatory note, Architecture with a emphases on buildings and skylines. The note with the theme and explanation of each item in the box speaks a lot about the care and effort they take in curating it. It's definitely not just randomly thrown together! 

This time the box was stuffed with two really cool pocket notebooks: The City Works Debossed notebook on the left and the Riba Museum Pocket Journal on the right. Let's take a closer look at them below.

The Southbank Debossed Notebook from The City Works has such a beautiful and unique cover! It has a raised "debossed" hand pressed cover which is fun and pleasing to the touch. The notebook is A6 sized, blank notebook with 144 pages in it, which lays flat in use so it can be great for sketching on the go. I'm really liking the look of this notebook! The Kensington greeting card, which you have might have noticed on the first picture in this post, is from the same makers as this notebook. 

The other book is a "Museums and Galleries" pocket journal, published by RIBA Publishing, which stands for the Royal Institution of British Architects. It's has 178 lined pages, with a storage pocket in the back and a magnetic closure "flap"on the front. The cover design is adapted from a drawing by Charles Robert Cockerell "the most famous building in the world" and is in the collection of RIBA Archives and Libraries. Now being Archivist/Librarian myself I know you can find amazing treasures from the past in unknown archives, like this beautiful drawing! I'm glad that RIBA is making these accessible for us and the sales of these books benefits the RIBA Architectural Library as well. And helping Archives and Libraries stay open and free of use for public is something I fully support!

About the pens that were included: on the bottom you see the uniball eye roller ball pen in fine with black waterproof ink. It's an instant fave! I had used these before a long time ago and happy to get reacquainted with them again :) New to me is the uni ball air on top which I received in blue and with a broad tip.  It doesn't say it's waterproof on the pen, but in the product description it says it is when dried. I should test it before I try it with watercolors, though! It also has a fun tipping, you can write thick or thin depending on the angle you write with. So sorta like a fountain pen or a pentel tradio, but this has a round tip. I could use them both in my art work for sure. 

FYI: The London city silhouette bookmark you see below the pens was not listed, but have seen in other pictures of the box that they all have it and I suspect it was just thrown in there as a fun extra :) 

In conclusion: The content of the box is worth more than the 25£/30€ subscription fee for sure. This month we have received not 4 but 6 postcards (9,50€ for the set), 2 uni ball pens (2,50€ each), a hand pressed greeting card (3,50€) and two notebooks (blank - 13€ and lined 10€) The prices are based on what I found for each item upon searching the products through google. Bringing the total value of the august box 41€ ex. shipping. 

That is definitely not bad a bad deal at all! I also really liked the contents of this box and like the July box, this one is also sold out. But Spotlight Stationery still have a few of their past boxes for sale and they recently added the postcards sets to their shop as well. And if you so desire you can always subscribe to the Stationery box on a monthly or bi-monthly basis (the september box ships on the 23rd this week!). 

So the question remains, will I or won't I get a subscription. I have really thought about it and even though I really liked the content of both the July and August boxes at this time I won't be getting a subscription. This is purely because of 1) Budgeting reasons (there is a Penshow coming up in Tilburg later this month which I am saving my pennies for...) and 2) my stationery hoarding is getting WAY out of control! While I like getting new products to try, I actually need to TRY and USE them as well and not just get new stuff all the time. Like these pocket notebooks, I have like 5 different ones sitting in my closet to use. Now it's 7... Sigh, it's been an ongoing issue with me and trying to get better at using and not hoarding. So for these personal reasons I am not indulging getting a subscription (at this point in time) but I DEFINITELY recommend it as the Spotlight Stationery team surely do a great job in curating these boxes!

Hope this review was useful to you if you have been thinking about subscribing to the Spotlight Stationery box. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

namasté

Disclaimer: I was not in any way compensated by Spotlight Stationery for this review. There are no affiliated links and the opinions reflected above are completely my own. 

Paper Goods: Fabriano EcoQua A5 dotted notebook written review

Not too long ago I was at Van Der Linde art supply store in Amsterdam and I noticed they had a whole section of these Fabriano EcoQua notebooks on sale for 50% off! Yeah, I was itching to buy one and then I remembered the promise I made to myself; not to buy more new notebooks, unless I would do an actual review on it. So that's what I did! It's a hand written review and I've tested it with fountain pens and various other pens like copics, fineliners, sharpies, and even blo-pens (I still have a set from like 15 years ago....).

I chose the A5 dotted and glued on the long side notebook because of this color! Gorgeous deep purple color that reminded me of Montblanc Lavender Purple. I had my Pelikan M350 inked with de Atramentis Aubergine and that is what I used for the pro's and cons list of the written review.

This pen and ink combo showed a lot of ghosting and some bleed through while other combinations did not at all! All the pens and ink combo below showed almost no ghosting or none bled through!

The ink held up pretty well, even the flex with the waterman had no feathering! Also I have brought back my Raden VP into rotation and I am getting used to the clip/grip situation :)

I also tested a bunch of other pens and yeah that is some pretty well behaved paper! It's toothier than Tomoe River for sure, but I think you can definitely compare it to Leuchtturm paper, though that is a bit smoother to the touch. I had fun doing the above page. In the end i took my Blo-Pens out and spattered some ink over it :D

To show you the ghosting/bleed through, saturated ink/pen combo's like my Pelikan M350 and DA Aubergine leaves a mark on the flip side, as do alcohol based markers like Copic, Letraset and sharpies. But other than that, pretty clean flip side pages so with the right pen, it can definitely be used for double sided writing!

In conclusion, for only 1,55€ (which is the sale price at Van der Linde) you have an excellent A5 fountain pen friendly versatile notebook in one of 8 pretty colors! There are more sizes out there and I might pick up a set of pocket size notebooks next time I am near the store!

Hope this review was useful to you. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

namasté

Spotlight Stationery July 2016 Box Review

Yes, the above pic may or may not contain spoilers ;) But July box is sold out and the August boxes have been shipped, so this review has been a little bit over due but I wanted to share it and my thoughts about it with you at any rate. 

I've been following Spotlight Stationery (a (bi)monthly stationery subscription box service based in the UK) on Instagram for a while now and then they posted a while back that they still had one July box left, I grabbed that chance with both hands (also because the spoiler photo had something Turquoise in it and yeah how can I let that pass me by?!) Mary from Spotlight Stationery crew kindly let me buy the box as a one-off, which I really appreciate as I was on the fence to get a subscription right away. So thank you again, Mary! The boxes are 25£ plus postage and packaging (UK: £2.00 Europe: £5.25 Rest of the world: £7.50) So I paid the equivalent of 36€ including PP and a few days later I had this waiting for me in my mailbox:

It looked well stuffed and I was beyond excited to open it!

The goodies came in nicely packaged in tissue paper and looks very stylish with their logo and slogan "Indulge your passion for stationery" which I certainly did!

And these are the contents of the July box; I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was Rhodia themed!

The set included (pricing is based on uk webstore prices upon googling the items): 2 staple bound small pocket notebooks (grid) (2£ for both), triangle orange pencil (1,50£), soft black leather pencil case (10£ but a seemingly hard item to find as it's out of stock in most stores...) and the turquoise thing I was so curious about is a soft cover Rhodiarama A5 notebook in dot grid (13,75£) which I always wanted to try out! So I was super thrilled to find that in the box. Also I have to note that this was a departure from their usual boxes as they made it themed based on a brand. I definitely like this idea and I hope they will do that again in the future!

What I also like about this subscription box is that you get an assortment of postcards by young/up and coming artists along with it. There are some really talented people out there and I always love to support indie illustrators and by getting a Spotlight Stationery box you are also helping a charity. For every box they ship they will make a donation to National Star, a charity working with young people with disabilities and acquired brain injuries. I don't know about you, but for me this does lessen the guilt of buying or as they put it "indulging" in buying more stationery. Well played Spotlight Stationery team, well played!

I am definitely happy with the content of my first ever (no I kid you not!) surprise stationery box purchase. (I haven't done subscriptions ever since I stopped with the Inkdrop offered by Goulet pens back in the day) I definitely think that the cost of the box is well worth the content in this case. The summed up amount is 27,50£ and that isn't even included the postcards. Lets say those are 2£ each and then the total would be 35,25£ which what you pay for the box incl. shipping to the EU! So if you like the content of the box as much as I do it is definitely worth it IMHO. 

The question I am struggling with though is will I get a subscription? Will I indeed subscribe to indulge in my stationery needs? The thing is, while I do like surprises, I also like knowing what I will get and what I like about Spotlight Stationery they also offer their past boxes as a one-off buy. I have not made up my mind about this yet, but as I typed this I have noticed they still had one of the August boxes left! Which is a total surprise as I have not seen any spoiler pics of the content yet. So I went ahead and got that one as well and I'm going to wait and see the August box content before I do subscribe. 

If you want to subscribe, when you register for their email news letter, you will get a discount code for 15% off on your first box. Yeah I also have no idea what I am waiting for really, it's such a good deal... maybe it's the fact that I am still thinking - do I really need all this stationery as my closets are overflowing with notebooks I have not even used yet. Well maybe I should make a conscious effort to do so and do some more stationery related reviews!

At any rate, I hope this review was useful to you if you are considering to subscribe to the Spotlight Stationery box yourself. Thanks for stopping by and have great day!

namasté

Disclaimer: I was not in any way compensated by Spotlight Stationery for this review. There are no affiliated links and the opinions reflected above are completely my own. 

Paper Goods: On a field trip with Fieldnotes Pocket Notebook

At the beginning of this month a fun bi-annual event took place in Haarlem, the Stripdagen. I went there on Sunday afternoon and it was so much fun! The weather was great and there was so much to see and to do. I decided to bring along a little pocket book and asked various artists to sketch in them, like I did last time.

This year I took with me a Fieldnotes pocket notebook for the artists to sketch in. I kindly received a mixed Compilation set from Mishka from Bureau Direct for review purposes and it's great for an every day carry. Lightweight and a great small size (a6) for a purse/handbag or a back pocket.

In the compilation set you will receive 3 Fieldnotes pocket notebooks (I received a mix of ruled, plain and graph paper, but you can get a 3 pack of any of the variations mentioned), one Fieldnotes band of rubber and one click ballpoint. It came in very nicely packaged in a Bureau Direct Logo plastic sleeve. I decided to take the graph notebook with me on this trip and I have a few shots of it being used in action. I asked all whom wanted to participate to draw me a kitty :)

The first drawing in the book is done by Leslie Saurus. I really love her artwork!

Also got a fun drawing from Doeke from Studio Doeke. He was a cheeky one and did not draw a cat for me, like last year he simply refused to do that. But he did make a fun drawing in there none the less. I suppose it will be a running gag from now on, in two years he will not draw a cat for me either ;)

And of course, when you love cats, Anne from Pony People cannot be missed in the compilation! Here she is drawing one of her cute kitties (similar to the ones you see on the T-Shirts on her stall) in my book.

Her stall was so cutely decorated with these fun cat balloons! And look at those cute pins! I definitely got one of the pencil kitties for myself.

Lots of kitties drawn in my @fieldnotesbrand notebook at the #stripdagenhaarlem yesterday :) Thanks so much everyone :) #kittycat #comic #drawn #notebook #edc #everydaycarry #bureaudirect #stationeryaddict #collection #fieldnotes #kitties #catsareawesome

A video posted by cheetarah (@missthundercat) on Jun 6, 2016 at 4:54am PDT

I do not have an in action shot of all the drawings, but here is a video of all the drawings made in the book. People used all kinds of materials to draw in it, like pencils, fineliners and even sharpies. I asked them to use one page and not the back because I didn't want any drawings being over lapped by bleed through. It was a fun and successful fieldtrip and the notebook was almost filled up all the way. At the end I added some kitty stamp prints on the cover of the notebook and named it "the kitty edition".

The kitty related loot from the Stripdagen. I definitely support cat-loving poor artists! Everything is super awesome, but the best thing I got was a customized drawn pin of Meesha (left to the notebook) which says "It's always nap time". And yes Meesha is currently napping in her new basket as I write this.

Soooo adorable!

I hope this gave you some idea's on how to make your Fieldnotes Pocket Notebook a special limited edition one :) The next comic con in Amsterdam is in August and I am hoping to collect more kitty drawings in the other pocket notebooks as well. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

namasté

Paper goods: Papelote Notebook Cover & Clairefointaine 1951 vintage notebook

It was a beautiful day out and we decided to make good use of it and go to the beach. The perfect opportunity to test out the great Papelote A5 Notebook Cover outdoors! This notebook cover, together with the Clairefontaine 1951 retro cloth bound notebook was so kindly sent to me by Mishka from Bureau Direct for review purposes! Thank you so much Mishka!!

The papelote notebook cover is made with soft cotton cloth and comes in various designs. I was sent the red and white striped with blue inseam cover. A lovely combination! The cover has an elastic strap attached to it, which can hold 5 writing utensils. It comes with a pencil to get you started. You can see the array of items I've chosen to carry with it; a few fine Steadtler fine liners, a faber castell brush marker, sakura gelly roll pen and a water brush pen. The size I have here is the A5 size, which can fit any A5 size notebooks like the Leuchtturm 1917 and Rhodia notebooks. I chose the Clairefontaine 1951 vintage style notebooks, because of the fact it has fountain pen friendly paper and well just look at it.

It's pretty and it's turquoise! They come in 3 different sizes, the pocket size, A5 exercise and A5 clothbound books. I got to test them all and they fit in very nicely in the notebook cover.  

 Also I used some fun journal rubber stamps to categorize my notebooks :) 

Fun fact, Bureau Direct also offers the pocket books in a fun compilation with the J. Herbin rollerball pen and ink cartridges. The turquoise set comes with J. Herbin Bleu Pervence turquoise ink cartridges. They also have the bottled ink here. A scrumptious set for a turquoise fanatic like me :D

Anyhow, back to the notebook cover! You can carry a lot of tools inside the cover besides just the notebook due to the flexibility of the soft cotton cloth cover!

Look at that! Doesn't that look scrumptious?? Yes, the brownie was really yummy as well ;) So what did I take with me in my notebook cover? Take a look below:

I tucked in a pack of water color pencils, a pocket size coloring book, the Lamy Safari Dark Lilac (see my pens and ink post about it here), a pocket sketchbook and...

An A5 Clipboard! The cover has a seem opening on the back where you can tuck this baby in! I found this discovery brilliant as you can add sturdiness to the cover which allows you to sit down anywhere and write, draw, color or whatever on the go! I already had this one, but Bureau Direct are selling these clipboards by Penco as well. So what do I use my clairefontaine journal for? I use it as my Daily Gratitude and Loving Kindness journal. You have seen shots of the pages in my Pens and Ink post, surely. Every morning (or at least I try to) I write down the loving kindness meditation to set the tone for Compassion for the day. I will write another post about this type of journaling at a later point, but let me show you a page as a reminder.

As I said before, the paper in clairefontaine books hold fountain pen inks really well. It's definitely one of my preferred notebooks for journalling as I love the line spacing (7mm) for my handwriting and the smoothness of the paper lets the nibs just glide over the paper. 

In conclusion: The combination of the Papelote Notebook Cover with these Clairefontaine 1951 notebooks is a wonderful thing! I thoroughly enjoyed using cover. A major plus point being the flexibility of it. Also a great thing about the fact that it's a cloth cover is that you can wash them quite easily if you spill any (non permanent) ink on it! The straps are mighty handy too! It works best if you have something sturdy in the cover like a clipboard or a hard cover notebook, though. If you are looking for only the notebook straps, Papelote also makes them separately which Bureau Direct also sells. Those work best on hard cover notebooks. 

Thanks again Mishka/ Bureau Direct, I've really improved on my daily writing sessions by having such a wonderful set up for it :) By the way, if you're looking into journalling yourself, and looking for something that might work for you, why don't you check out Stationery Wednesday as this month's spotlight falls on  the Bullet Journal. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter if you haven't already. Next to fun news, specials and competitions, it also contains a weekly discount code for 10% off your purchase at Bureau Direct shop! That's not something you'd want to miss out on!

Hopefully this review was useful to you and inspired you to go out and journal in the wide open :) 

Thanks for stopping by & have a great sunday!

namasté

(disclaimer: I got these items free of charge for review purposes and was not monetarily compensated. All opinions stated here are my own and there are no affiliate links.) 

Paper Goods: Maruman Mnemosyne Word Cards

Last week I got ill with a really unpleasant flue type thing and was stuck at home for a good while. So I thought I'd spend my time doing what I like to do best, organizing and cataloging stuff. Yeah it was almost like being at work ;) I wanted to make a better and more comprehensive chart of all the inks I have in samples and bottles. The color chart wheels I made with Le Typographe ticket books are fun, but limited to the set of pages in those booklets. When I heard about the Mnemosyne Word Cards on the Goulet Q and A while back, I knew these would be perfect for what I had in mind.

This was my set up: In front of the telly, while watching some Graham Norton episodes on you tube... And then it was swabbing time! 

The cards hold up ink really well, great drying time, no bleed through and minimal feathering!

Q-tips are great for swabs, and I made sure I hit the edges of the cards and used a vintage semi flex pen, by Onoto de La Rue to dip and write the brand and ink name.

The booklet has 100 sheets with 156 grams of water color like paper. Because there is no bleed through, you can also opt to use the back of the cards. I will use it to write information on the type of ink on (ie if I have just tried a sample or a bottle) 
And three ink sample trays in, I already filled one of these booklets! I am currently busy with booklet number 2 and the sad news is that I heard these word cards are being discontinued, so I stacked up on them to make sure I can still use them for future swabs.

Hope this gave you some idea's on how to make your own ink swabs.

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste