I can't stop buying (or mixing) ink!

But I'll never finish the inks I've already got!

I got a new drawer unit from Ikea, it looks sturdy so I decided to move there my ink collection. I hope that having a limited space for storage will help me restrain myself from buying more bottles... who am I kidding?
(not pictured here the samples I got off friends *waving at O*)

back from the holidays

Two weeks, and I mean two whole weeks of doing nothing but relax. The place isn't anything exotic or fancy, just the regular family house in the countryside, and old farm really, but I'm grateful for it. I took long walks in the woods, had too many cups of tea and painted a little... now it's hard to think about getting back to work!

Check my Flickr stream in a few days for the scans of the stuff I painted.

Goodness inside

Usually when people think about Nutella don't think about ink at all, but I'm weird so...



When a co-worker gave me a tiny 30g replica of the famous jar of sweet spread I had to know where I could get more, turns out sets of three mini jars are only sold during holidays so for Easter I hoarded some sets.



They are great for keeping ink! The lid screws tidily, thick food-grade plastic so there aren't many chances it might react with some ink, the jar is quite capacious, the plastic is clear so I can check for precipitations in mixtures, nearly perfect I'd say!

I don't really like sweet stuff that much, the things I do for the sake of pens...

little quiz

For all the pens/art supplies addicts out there: what is this?



During lunch break I stopped by one of the smallest but best stationery store in town, I was chatting with the owner when she showed me this item and I couldn't believe my eyes! It had to come home with me!

The vial is very small, 5,5 cm or 2,4 made of glass with a rubber stopper but the container doesn't really matter though it's nice, what it's really special it's what is inside.
I'm pondering about getting another one so I can use it without regrets.

So, what do you think it is? :)

16 june 2010

The pens in my pencil case at work this week (sorry for the photo, taken with my mobile)


Fountain pens for work and mechanical pencils with pocket brush pen for sketching ;)

Lamy Safari XF nib filled with a dyi burgundy mix
Pelikan M150 M nib filled with Noodler's Prime of The Commons
Eversharp Skyline XF nib filled with dyi Noodler's olive green mix
Mabie Todd Blackbird (just finished restoring the other day) M nib filled with J Herbin's Bleu Nuit

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen
Pentel F.357 (multi pen with 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7mm leads all in one)
Muji pen/pencil duo

Muji passport notebooks

Every time I stop at Muji I grab an handful of these notebooks, they are small, handy, the size of a passport, and I like to customize the covers. The paper is yellowish, pretty thin and reminds me of Moleskine's paper, it's sewn together so it makes the binding pretty durable.

Some images on Flickr

This is embarassing

The state of my bed right before tidying up and going to sleep.
I was trying to sort of some colours in my big watercolour box and making charts.

Taken with my mobile sorry for the quality of photo.
Now I really should go to sleep!

my old ladies

I took this photo for a fellow pen-addict in a rush and only later I noticed I made a few mistakes. Actually the correct age order is 1, 3, 2, 5, 4, 6, 7 .

watercolour sets

I love to take and look at pictures of art supplies so I couldn't wait to take pictures when a friend on LJ asked me a question about watercolours :)

My watercolour sets:
- studio set artist quality Windsor & Newton Artists half pans and some Schmincke Horadam. It started a lot less full than now, some colours are old, some newer, and it keeps growing, I can't help because they are like candy!
- for travelling light and cheap student grade W&N Cotman set, best £9,95 spent ever. It's light and has three tiers of mixing surfaces. Switched Cobalt Blue with Prussian Blue, I really don't get why they included it if there was already Ultramarine (and Prussian is prettier), and threw away China White for Mauve.
- the tiny box is an empty candy tin with Neutral Tint, Payne Grey and Sepia useful if I want to work in monocrome or darken mixes from the sketch kit (you won't see black or white in any of my sets).

A folding 4 round brush and shortened 10 to fit in my pencil case (cut to size with pruning shears!)

And handmade sketchbook of course!

Birdbook

Crappy sketchbook I made with Fabriano Studio Watercolour 200gsm paper.

I needed a pocket sketchbook to carry on vacation, couldn't find a regular one to my liking so I made it using paper from a big pad I had lying around that wasn't much used anyway.

Can you believe it? There wasn't a single pocket sized sketchbook in my town! And I didn't have time to order it on the internet, it took me less time and pain to make my own and it was fun!

The cover is packing paper, binding tape and prints of stamps, I meant to use real stamps (I have tons) but when in need I couldn't find my stash. And sprayed with a couple of layers of matte acrylic transparent paint to avoid stains :)

Look inside