Tool Time Tuesday: Color Cube in Action

Color Cube

Welcome to Tool Time Tuesday. Where I share a new and sometimes old craft tool that I am currently using. Today let’s take a look at The Color Cube by Sarah Renae Clark. She is one of my favorite colorists I follow online and she has come out with this wonderful product that just gives me all the feels.

Let’s rewind and go back several years ago, when I began going on Pinterest to find color combinations for my cardmaking projects. I love anything that can help me quickly create a color pallette for my projects. I often find inspiration from product containers and patterned papers. Then Sarah came up with a digial product called The Color Catalogue and I used it on my iPad. I purchased her digital version to use on the iPad. It would have a picture of something and then pull out the colors to show you compatible color combinations and she also grouped images into categories so I could find stuff even faster.

However, as much as I love technology, I am a tactile person. So when Sarah said she was designing a physical product, my ears perked up and I pre-ordered them immediately. You can buy one or both boxes and they contain hundreds of color printed cards in a variety of themes with the color combinations pulled out on the side. One side has the image and the other side has the hex code so you can also use it for digital projects.

Ok, enough yappin’, I am here to show you how I use it. One thing that can slow me down when I color in my coloring books is committing to a color palette. So I grabbed one of my new coloring books from Christmas and opened up one of the beautiful cubes. By the way, it’s always wonderful when a crafter/artist designs their own products because the quality of the cards and the cubes are impeccable. I have them on my desk and they look like an art.

I selected two cards one for the whales and water and the other for all the other images. Then I held them up to my swatch charts for my Prismacolor pencils and found matches then pulled the pencils.

I only selected one pencil for each color because I am working with a grayscaled image but if I were going to do a lot of shading I would select light and dark compatible pencils for each of the colors.

The final page turned out pretty cool. I don’t think I woud have selected those exact colors but I am glad I used the Color Cube for this one.

I will share more with you as I continue to use them. But if you are interested in getting one, check out her video. It might be on waitlist now but well worth it in my opinion.

Color Cube

Happy crafting!

InkyPlayFriday: Swatching my new watecolor paint set

My new Kuretake watercolor paints

I bought my first set of Kuretake watercolor paints a couple years ago and although I loved them, I didn’t use them often. Back in November, I saw all the buzz about them coming out with a new watercolor set. What I realized is that for a beginner what motivates me to use something is the colors. The first set had more basic colors and as a beginner that doesn’t know how to make my own colors, it was daunting and I didn’t feel motivated to use the old one. Fast forward to December when I saw the color pallette in the new release, I was so excited I pre-ordered them and patiently waited.

I found this great stamp set to use to swatch my paints.

Because this year, I plan on exploring with paints, I have been watching videos and even purchased a couple books to get me started. One video I saw these great stamps to add some fun to swatching my paints. As a big believer in swatching, I swatch all of my coloring supplies. (I’m actually a little behind with all of my recent purchases.) I use my swatch charts of my Copic Markers, Prismacolor and Derwent pencils every time I work on a project. So it is important to me to create a swatch for this paint set to set myself up for success.

Choosing which stamps to use.

This stamp set has really fun stamps to swatch. I plan on trying them all, over the course of the year. This new set has 24 colors and and since I am using this small block watercolor paper pad to create my swatch chart, I think the smaller vertical set of 6 boxes to create my chart.

Laying out the stamps to see if they fit.

What’s the saying “Measure twice cut once.” or something like that. Since I don’t want to waste the paper, I lay out the stamps to see if I can fit them all on the page before commiting to ink and stamping.

All finished stamping.

Eventhough the ink dries fast,I still let it sit for a few minutes before I begin painting. This ink is perfect to use with watercolors.

A little tea while I paint.

I am liking the colors a lot. I definitely can see several that I naturally gravitate to. The computer does not do the colors justice. I am also using a new brush set. This one is pretty nice. Well based on my beginner knowledge, I like the way they feel in my hand.

All finished.

I like seeing the damp papertowel while I work with all the colors blending. I have to let go of my need to clean and enjoy the unexpected with painting.

Done!

There is something so satisfying about looking at completed swatch charts and seeing all the colors. It was especially fun to swatch the darker ones to see what they would look like on paper. Some of them were such a pleasant surprise.

Next I am going to begin reading the book I have and try one of the exercises.

Have a lovely weekend!

Sneak Peek From My Christmas Craft Haul

A pile of craft goodness!

Hello! I hope you are find at least one thing that brings you joy today. Today I wanted to share a photo of a pile of some of the crafty goodness that I gifted myself with for Christmas. Every year, I pick a few things off my wish list and buy them for Christmas. As they arrive, I place them in a bag and won’t open them until after Christmas. This year I focused on some tools and loads of coloring products. Over the next few weeks I will open them and show you how I plan to use them.

A better look at some of the items I bought.

I picked out coloring (pencil and watercolor) items, some stuff for my bullet journaling and a really cool tool that I can’t wait to show you. I like to try different brands as well as different grade crafting supplies to see what I enjoy using.

I am always inspired to create when I see swatches of color mediums. Next week I will share some swatching of some of the new paints I purchased. I will be trying some new brushes that I bought last year and use them on some new cotton watercolor paper. So come back next week to have a look.

In the meantime, have a lovely weekend and I hope you find something fun to create!

Happy New Year!

Time to plan.

Happy New Year! I’m back!!! I feel like 2022 flew by but I am looking forward to my creative journey in 2023. I have my design planner and calender out to set some structure to my workflow. I took much of November and all of December to reflect and begin to identify what I want my creative play to look like for 2023.

One thing that I would like to see is some enduring consistency with posts on this blog. I am thinking that I might have set my goal too high last year with three posts a week. So I am going to aim for two, sometimes might be three but definitely one a week. I want to continue to share both my Belinda’s Crafts work with Inside my Studio but I also would like to share my creative journey with various mediums. I have some new series in mind, one of which will be called, Product Play Wednesday where I will share photos, tips, trials and errors with new products I acquire in my creative space.

This year I feel like I want to dive into painting and watercolor. It is a medium that has presented a little anxiety for me in the past. I think I shy away from the unpredictable aspects but that is exactly what I want to conquer and let myself have fun. So I have acquired some great products to sink into it. I would like to learn how to use it alone and then work to combine it with my color pencils.

Another area I would like to explore deeply is papercrafting (3D and papercutting with kirigami art). I have had some really cool project ideas I put on the back burner far too long. So do come back to see me fail often but have some fun in the process.

I hope you had a lovely holiday season and look forward to some creative bliss in 2023!

Happy crafting!

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