From My Idea File: Drawing Tool Kits

As many of my sewing readers know, sewing notions and tools are important to someone who is passionate about sewing. The right combination of pencils, erasers and marking tools are vital to an artist, especially a beginning artist like me. Having your notions and tools organized can be even more vital to your creativity and productivity!

Over the past few semesters of graphic design and illustration classes, I’ve put together the perfect art toolkit for drawing and illustration.

-Artbin storage box. The perfect size for me is this 4-inch wide by 10-inch tall box. (they make a great selection of storage solutions for art and craft supplies)

-Mechanical Pencil

-Ballpoint pen

-Erasers: pink, white and kneaded

-Set of graphite pencils in 2B, HB, 6H hardness/softness

-Verithin pencil

-Charcoal pencils in black and white

-Razer blades (for sharpening the charcoal pencils)

-Colored pencils: red, blue, green purple, and white

-Pencil sharpener

-Exacto knife and extra blades

-Sharpie marker, fine tip on one end and regular tip on the other end

I have two more art bins for more specific projects. In a separate art bin, I keep my charcoal supplies because they can be very messy. It holds my charcoal sticks, charcoal pencils, an Exacto knife for sharpening, and various erasers (which used to be white).

My other art bin holds my pastel supplies for doing heightened drawings like this and this, pastel pencils, erasers and a sharpener.

I also have a great mesh pouch I use for my brushes. I like this mesh material on the front side because it helps the brushes breath and air dry after I’ve washed them.

The only things that don’t fit into these kits are a metal ruler, which I carry separately, and a scissors, but I have an Exacto knife, so I don’t really need a scissors.

I work in different areas of our house and backyard, and I’m back and forth to campus everyday, so it helps to keep things organized. I love being able to just grab a sketchbook and one of these little drawing kits, knowing they hold all the basic supplies I may need.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happies

My friend Amanda Jean was in town recently to do a book signing at a new sewing hangout.

She brought me a bag full of “happies!”

Note: Happies are a concept invented by Rene and Michelle’s mom: “a small, unexpected gift given for no specific reason other than just because.”

She brought me so many wonderful things! A beautiful mini quilt in my favorite colors, a thread basket, a pincushion, (still hoping to see a pattern to come out for those two goodies),  a stack of fabric squares, another stack of fabrics, soap, lip balm and chocolate. What more could a creative girl need!

Photoshop tutorials

Thankful Friday

Thank goodness it’s Friday! At the end of the school/work week, I like to take a moment to share the things I’m thankful for from the past week as a way to appreciate the big things and the small things.

1. I am thankful to be able to take a class in the interim semester (3 weeks between spring and summer). It’s been an intense week of class, 8:00 to 4:00 everyday with a half day on Fridays. I am learning so much and having loads of fun!

2. I am thankful we only have a half day of class on Fridays. I am going to use the afternoon to get caught up the zillion creative projects I have going on.

3. I am thankful my good friend Cindy was brave enough to put on her extrovert hat to get me an autograph of someone whose work I greatly admire. Thank you, Cindy!

4. I am thankful I woke up early one morning this week so I could see a beautiful orange and pink sunrise.

5. I am thankful my fluffy kitty kat Angel is doing well these days. (in case you didn’t know, she had surgery earlier this year)

6. I am thankful for alarm clocks to wake me up early.

7. I am thankful for my hair dryer.

8. I am thankful for watering cans so I can water our containers of flowers.

9. I am thankful I met my husband 15 years ago. We will be celebrating our 11-year wedding anniversary this weekend!

Hope you have a few things to be thankful for this week.

Farmers Market – May Update

We went to our infamous farmers market over the weekend.

Our weather was so gorgeous, making it a perfect morning to be outside browsing fresh bakery, cheese, produce and flowers.

As usual, we don’t buy much, mainly because we don’t want to carry it.

We got a breakfast sandwich, some monster cookies, lettuce, and some cheese curds.

This time of year, there’s just early season produce to be found, things like onions, radishes, rhubarb, and lettuce.

I always end up stocking up on pictures of some of the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen!

I hope the farmers don’t mind I’m sneaking pictures of their goodies.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Spring 2012: Floating Stars

It’s time for the Blogger’s Quilt Festival, Spring 2012 edition. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this event, it’s an online festival where quilters from all over the world share a picture of one of their favorite quilts they made. It takes place over the same weekend as the International Quilt Market, a wholesale trade show where fabric manufacturers and fabric designers get together to share their treasures with fabric shops. I hope to attend that Market someday with my own fabric designs, but not yet

I want to share with you this lap-size quilt I made on a whim at a quilting retreat last summer. I call it Floating Stars.

We were fabric shopping and I started picking up miscellaneous fabrics that I liked. Turns out, they went well together. Since I love stars, especially Gwen Marston‘s liberated star block, I decided to make a big star.

Then I decided to float a few random star blocks around it. I’m not big on following quilt patterns, so this was a fun project to figure out what I wanted as I went merrily along.

I had an extra star block so I incorporated it into the backing. I did some fun free motion quilting around the stars to make them pop, and echo quilting inside each star.

Thanks for stopping by!

Thankful Friday

Thank goodness it’s Friday! At the end of the work week, I like to take a moment to share the things I’m thankful for from the past week as a way to appreciate the big things and the small things.

1. I am thankful my spring semester is over! I got all As, by the way!!! I am especially thankful for all your wonderful comments on my final projects for Color, Web and Type.

2. I am thankful one of my classmates invited me to her party to celebrate her graduation from our graphic design program. I don’t get out much, so it was fun to eat pizza from the grill, drink sangria, sit outside with a campfire and chat with friends.

3.  I am thankful our weather has been sunny and gorgeous all week. Perfect timing!

4. I am thankful to have a few days off before my interim class starts (next week Tuesday).

5. I am thankful the previous owners of our house planted alliums. They are such a beautiful flower, but the bulbs are so expensive. (they are at least the size of a softball)

6. I am thankful I got our garden planted. We’re keeping it simple this year with tomatoes, peppers, and some new strawberry plants. I might add to it if I can find more veggie plants.

7. I am thankful for the wonderful fabric stash I have accumulated over the years. I’m pleased to report it’s now organized by color, which is so refreshing.

8. I am thankful for the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream my husband brought home from the grocery store.

9. I am thankful for the small Fiskars stick rotary cutter and cutting matt I have, which have come in handy for a couple paper projects I have brewing.

10. I am thankful for all the cereal boxes I’ve saved lately. They came in handy for above-mentioned paper projects.

Hope you have a few things to be thankful for this week.

Final Project for Typography Class

The final project for my Typography class was one of my favorite graphic design projects to date.

Our mission was to make up a name for a font company (called a font house or font foundry), and design a logo.

Then we had to make up a name for a typeface that already exists, and create a direct mail marketing piece for designers in the field. I chose a font that had an Art Deco style, called Parisian, which I renamed BessieSmith Typeface. Bessie Smith was a famous African American blues and jazz singer in the 1920s.

As soon as our teacher introduced this project and showed us marketing examples for inspiration, my brain was flooded with ideas.

I chose to design what I am calling a Typeface Toolkit. Since the typeface I picked was Art Deco style, I wanted to keep the designs clean and simply by using a black and white color scheme with pops of red. I usually gravitate to bold colors, but I wanted this to look as real and professional as possible.

-Fabric swatches, which I designed in black and white versions, and then sewed into zipper pouches, with hangtags describing the contents.

-Postcard booklet. I designed postcards for each letter, and front and back covers, and then stitched the book together using a hemp stitch Japanese stab binding method. I made the postcards perforated so they would be usable.

I designed the postcards to show each letter of the alphabet in uppercase and lowercase, and to show the typeface in action with a positive word on the front and the definition on the back.

-Stencils of a couple letters.

This project was a lot of work to design and pull together, but I had a lot of fun doing this. I hope I get the chance to do more design work like this in my future.