A Marriage of Science and Art Supplies

To start, I cannot say enough excellent things about Well Inked Box. They are a quarterly subscription box of cultivated art supplies. Each box has a theme and the most recent was Watercolors! One of the founders is in an online support group with me and it's awesome supporting women owned small businesses!  They are based in Canada and got their start through Kickstarter. They are totally passionate about writing and art supplies and really find some unique things to share in their box.

They do ship to the US and I find it's definitely worth the price. If you like what I show you here, you can use the code AMYM for 15% off! I don't get a kickback, but I like supporting my friends :)  

The box comes well packaged

As with most subscription boxes, you get a list and description of the sample that are included with each shipment

Watercolor Samples.

Here's a video guide to what was in my box

All of that to say, I brought the trading card watercolor paper to work with me. We get a shipment a couple times a week (more or less) from a watercolor producer (not featured in Well Inked but I'm also not going to name them for privacy concerns) and I wanted to experiment with the colors as I test them. My challenge to myself was to only use what I had in the lab (aside from the appropriate paper) and to see what I could come up with.

So the following little cards were made with the lab supplies I had in my testing of the paints (spreaders, pipette and a rough brush plus my gloved fingers). I really liked that the cards were small. It felt less intimidating to experiment and just play and not have specific goals in mind or an image to create. I would definitely buy these cards again, or just cut up some of my larger watercolor paper into small pieces for little practice pieces.

I had fun with them! I hope you enjoy them.

This was made only with the plate spreader and the gradations of our dilutions

Fingers and pipette only

Rough brush

Pipette only

Prewet and rough brush. A very rough water scene

Pipette only

Pipette and fingers

Pipette only with several dilutions

I call this " -3 -7 "    It shows the dilution strengths we use

Fingers and pipette

Marooned in South Carolina

Okay, so the title might be a bit dramatic, but it is somewhat accurate!

On New Year's Day we woke the kids up super early and headed to the airport for two quick flights to Myrtle Beach, SC. My parents have retired and purchased a house near, but not on, the beach just outside of Myrtle Beach. This was to be our holiday visit to them. As it so happens, we brought the ridiculously cold weather with us, though we avoided the terrible negative temperatures in Michigan.

It was supposed to be a fairly quick trip. Fly down on Monday, return Friday. With the storms all along the east coast, and a connection in Newark, NJ, we ended up not getting home until very late Tuesday, 4 days after our original return.  Third time was the charm, apparently, and all it took was a sacrifice of a water bottle to the Myrtle Beach Airport and the purchase of another carry on to hold all of our shit.

Ah, life with kids.

Despite all that, it was a nice trip to see my parents. I will agree with my husband though, from now on if we can't get a direct flight there and back, we're just going to drive.