My Favourite Art And Craft Products: March

What are your favourite art and craft products at the moment? Spill the beans I would truly love to know as I am always on the look out for new things to try out and personal referrals are always the best!

And as personal referrals are the best I thought I would do a little share with you of some of my current favourite art and craft products. I last did a Favourite Products share back in January in time for all the trade shows and you can hop on over to that blog post, 'My Favorite Art And Craft Products Before Creativation, Creativeworld And Stitches Really Get Going' if you missed it.

So what have I been working with since my last fave products run down?

Shall we start with some colour?

[There are some affiliate links in this blog post, so if you buy through them I do get a small amount of money at no extra cost to yourself. Thanks for your support!]


1. PaperMate Flair Felt Tip Pens

I am pretty smitten with the PaperMate Flair pens at the moment, I can not stop using them. The colours are bright and yummy and they are a waterbased, acid-free ink that drys quickly.

The bumf says they are designed not to bleed through paper but really it depends what paper you are using and how often you go over the same spot but they are doing pretty well in the Seawhite sketchbooks I talked about in my last favourite product blog post.

I've linked to them on Amazon for if you are looking for an online supplier but do shop around as I have seen these pens on sale and actually got my set in a discount bin in a Staples store, so it is worth checking those bins!

Go checkout my Instagram feed if you want to see these pens in action!


2. Bristol Board

If we are going to talk pens then it seems only natural to talk paper next. Paper does feature heavily in my favourite products lists as I use and have tried an awful lot of it. Last time I shared some of my favourite sketchbooks and watercolour papers. This time I'm going more towards the illustrative and drawing end of the paper spectrum with Bristol Board..

Bristol Board tends to be a heavier weight, super-smooth, crisp white paper and is perfect for precise pen work as the surface is so smooth the pen glides over it and won't snag on the texture. Someone who knows more about these things than me can correct me if I am wrong but as far as I know you can find Bristol board in different paper weights, I have two such pictured above one at 190gsm and the other at 250gsm.

But if you are in the US then you can also find it with different surfaces - Smooth and Vellum, which has more texture. For the work I have been doing recently, that needs precise clean lines, the smooth version is the one I am recommending today.

Bristol board is also great for stamping and colouring on but as it is quite expensive I generally use cheaper smooth paper for stamping and colouring.


3. StencilGirl Stencils

The next group of products on my list are the StencilGirl Stencils. I've been having lots of fun with these as you might have seen in my Art Slice Video a couple of weeks back and in the project video I made for the PaperArtsy/ StencilGirl blog hop in December last year. They are back on my desk at the moment and I've been using them for a whole range of different projects, one you will see first on my YouTube channel at 1pm today, don't forget to subscribe, or later on my Instagram feed *wink!

What I particularly like about the StencilGirl stencils is the sizes. So you can get some gorgeous large and small stencils but you can get some pretty awesome very large stencils and I love the 9" x 12" sizes which is just a little bit bigger than A4 size.


4. Synthetic Gel Monoprinting Plates

As we are talking about stencils one fun thing to do with stencils is to use them with Gelli plates. Now I held out a long, long time before I bought one of the synthetic gel monoprinting plates that hit the market a few years back. I used my own homemade Gelatine plates, and I still do as there are techniques I can do with a gelatine plate that just work better than with the synthetic plates and vice versa actually. But boy are the Gelli plates super-convenient! They really are great for a quick, no fuss, print session.

There are a few different ones on the market now since Gelli Arts bought out the Gelli plate. There is the Gel Press, from Gel Press and SpeedBall also has a gel plate now too. I've only used the Gelli Arts Gelli plate so if you have used the others I would love to know how they compare so do tell!

If you are still not sure if you want to invest in them then do go check out my blog post 'Monoprinting - Old School Style' on the home made version, there is the recipe and instructions on how to make it there.


5. PaperArtsy Eclectica³ {Kim Dellow} Stamps And Stencils

And I can't really do a favourite product list without shamelessly plugging the new stamp and stencil release I designed for PaperArtsy now can I? I mean it is true I have been using these products a lot since I last listed favorite products, so I could not really leave them off the list!

If you missed the release then you can catch up with it, plus a list of where to get them from, over on my release blog post from February.


So your turn - what are your current favourite art and craft products? What is getting you all excited and creative at the moment?

Kim

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My Favorite Art And Craft Products Before Creativation, Creativeworld And Stitches Really Get Going!

If you are an arty, crafty bod then you might know that it is the craft trade show season! Yay! What with CHA or Creativation, as it is now called, just starting RIGHT NOW in the US and going on until 23rd January. Then we have Creativeworld in Germany 28th to 31st January followed by CHSI or Stitches in the UK 19th to 21st February.  So be prepared to see a lot of exciting new products flood onto the market in the next few months! Well, actually, some can take many, many, many months to get over to the Europe, so yep, patience is need!

So ok, before we all go new product CA-RAY-ZZZZ (crazy, in case you weren't sure!), 'coz you know that we will! We can't help ourselves! I thought I would do a run down of some of my current favourite art and craft products that you can get your hands on now to play with and try out whilst you wait for the new stuff to filter through!


[I do use affiliate links and there are some in this blog post, which means that if you buy after using one of the affiliated links I get a small amount of money with no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!]

In no particular order we have:

1. Gouache Paint

I am just loving painting with Gouache, I feel it is being a little ignored by the craft world at the moment and the designers seeming to be getting all the fun with it. If you haven't yet played with gouache paint it is often described as an opaque watercolour paint, but I think it might be best to think of it as thicker, brighter paint than watercolour but a thinner less 'plastic-y' paint than acrylic, perhaps closer to the chalk paints that have been very popular. Ok, that is a very rough description of it, but I hope it gives you an idea of what it is like!

I'm still playing and discovering what it can and can not do for me, I love the strength of the colour, which makes it perfect for scanning projects and I think that it is why it is strongly favoured by a lot of designers. I'm thinking of doing a longer blog post on these so keep your eyes peeled and let me know if you have any particular questions you would like answered.



2. Watercolour Paper And Sketchbooks

Ok, so am I the only one who gets excited by paper? No surely not! I've tried lots of different papers for lots of different uses and will probably keep experimenting with different ones. There are a lot of papers that I could talk about but I'm going to concentrate on just a couple today as these are top quality at really good prices.

I'll be honest, I am a little wary of some craft companies (not all, but some) that package together 'art' quality paper for a BIG price and the paper just does not hold up to the promise. Shop around guys! Because you can find better quality paper at smaller price points.

Ok I'll get off of my soap box! Here are some of my suggestions of paper that are good quality and at a good price:

• Curtisward Paper Pads - Curtisward is collaborating the St Cuthberts Mill papermill to bring out a great low price point, high quality watercolour paper. So for example their A4 10 sheets of hot press (that's the really smooth surface one) is £4.79 (plus the postage of course).  Well worth trying out their whole range (which I plan to do btw).

• Seawhite Sketchbooks - I love Seawhite sketchbooks and if you haven't discovered them yet then I would strongly suggest you try them out. You can find them on their wholesale website, or their customer website and also from places like Curtisward and CassArt and a load of other art shops. They also make branded products so you might already be using Seawhite's products but may not have realised it! Again shop around, their products can be at different prices from different sources. 

• Fluid Watercolor Blocks - ok so these are not like super cheap but if you have ever tried buying watercolour paper in blocks then you will know that blocks can be pretty expensive. Blocks are great for fast watercolour work, or out in the field work, because they are gummed on at least two sides so that the top layer stays flat, meaning that you don't have to stretch the paper or tape it to a board to do some watercolour techniques. At the moment the re-branded fluid pads (I think they are re-branded and not a new product but I could be wrong) can be found at discounted prices in places like CassArt so grab them! (But leave me some!).

3. Watercolours and Mop Brushes

Watercolours are also still in my top medium to work with list and I play with different brands and different qualities. I don't think I have a complete favourite brand, although I still love the Prima Marketing Decadent Pies colour palette, but that is more for the colours than the paint itself. Again shop around, I have no help for you on what to buy, I am afraid, I tend to go for artist quality where I can and when I spot a discount. But I also have some student and craft quality paints which are useful for testing stuff out and just messing about with.

Teo Yi Chie from Parka Blogs has a great YouTube Channel that is worth watching for watercolour paint comparisons.

Then there are mop brushes or quills. I have absolutely fallen in love with these and have been using the Jacksons Art synthetic quill series 777 or their newer Raven Synthetic mop.



4. Ceramic Palettes 

Alright so one of the palettes in the picture above is actual plastic, and one of the watercolour sets too, but I am really trying to cut down on the plastic in my studio. Let's face it there is just too much plastic everywhere. But plastic is cheap and easy and finding alternatives is actually quite hard. So I've turned to some small ceramic palettes, like the little flower one in the bottom right of the picture above and I am trying out an aluminum one too.

This little seven-well porcelain palette from Curtisward is the cheapest I have spotted so far and is great for watercolour.  If you have any non-plastic alternatives please do let me know! I am not beyond using tableware by the way!



5. Masking Fluid And Fineline Tips.

Ok so my last product is not a money-saver tip and does actually require the buying of two products! You can also find masking fluids that already come in a bottle with a fineline tip. But this is my favourite masking fluid, not that I've tested loads, about three brands in total so far but this one won.

So get the pen version of the Schmincke Aqua Watercolour Paint Masking Fluid, white or blue up to you and swap out the top for the 18 gauge Fineline Applicators top.

Oh yes! Super easy pen applicator. Takes a little practice to learn how hard to squeeze to get which line thickness but it is a very handy little thing! I did try a 20 gauge as well but I think it was too small for the consistency of the masking fluid. Oh and by the way you can get refills of the masking fluid which work out quite cost effective.



These are my favourite art and craft products, well at least this month, so what are your current favourite products? And if you are watching Creativation, Creativeworld or Stitches what are you really looking forward to seeing?


Kim




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