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!

a matter of cleaning

In my opinion you shouldn't mail pens filled with ink, but last week I received in the mail a pen still filled with Waterman Blue-Black, it wasn't a big deal so I cleaned the leaks and started writing with it straight away.

Yesterday I finally ran out of ink so I started my cleaning routine (which basically means flushing for with lukewarm water until the water comes out clean) and I was surprised to see some dried ink particles coming out. As I kept cleaning the pen I saw more and bigger flakes of ink and it was pretty disgusting.
Maybe I'm a neat freak but I was highly disappointed, I've never seen that much dirt in a pen, not even in pens found at flea markets. It's just a matter of common sense, a clean pen works better than one filled with muck, there is no point at flossing nibs or lamenting poor flow when bits of ink clog everything.

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