I admire people who blog consistently.  The ones who post 2 or 3 articles a week, every week, week after week and year after year.  I have to admit that while I am consistent in many areas of my life, so far blogging has not been a good example of that.

Maybe I make it harder than it has to be.  Believing that every post has to be incredibly clever or informative.  That they have to be long when short is probably better anyway.  Twitter is easy with it’s character limit and Instagram is just a snapshot and a few hashtags.  Blogging is something different to me.  More personal.

I am a big fan of The Artist’s Way and write Morning Pages every day.  Three pages of handwritten, stream of consciousness writing.  I’m on my 29th journal now so I know I can be consistent when I put my mind to it.

So here’s to channeling the consistency from other areas of my life into my blog.  Here’s to sharing even more.  And here’s to hoping everyone enjoys the ride.

 

 

I am fortunate to have this fantastic little arts and crafts shop about a mile from my house and a couple of weeks ago I stopped in for a visit. The owner showed me these new Prima Paintables Pads she had just gotten in and I knew I had to try them. I picked up two – one from the French Riviera collection and one from the Vintage Emporium collection.

One of the things that really intrigued me about these pads is that they had resist designs as well as regular printed sheets. I love the idea of painting over the resist and seeing the white design come through. It’s a little bit like magic or a secret coded message.

The pages are printed on a very heavy watercolor stock. I did washes on a couple of the resist pages and I used a spray bottle on a printed page and they all held up nicely. I was especially pleased with how well the printed page took me spraying so much water onto it without pilling.

There are 12 pages total per pad – six printed and six resist – so two of each design.

I will most likely cut these up to use in art journal collages or on ATCs or bookmarks. They will make fantastic backgrounds.

 

This last year it felt like the holiday season was especially busy and then, immediately following New Years, I came down with a cold that knocked me out for a couple of weeks.  The kind of sick that puts you in a brain fog and anything that requires thinking is pretty much out of the question.  I haven’t been sick like that in a long time and I hope it’s a very long time before I’m sick like that again.

On to better things though.  The Etsy shop has been a fantastic learning experience and I’m making some changes there.  There are costs associated with listing and selling items on Etsy so originally I was bundling up my coloring pages so I could set a higher price tag.  Unfortunately, while many bundles were getting tons of views and favorites they weren’t getting a lot of sales.  I decided instead to break apart all of the bundles and just sell single pages now.  That way people can put together the bundles they want or just buy a single page if that’s what they’d like to do.  I’ve already seen an improvement in sales with that decision so it was definitely a good change.  I’ve also lowered the prices on some items and I plan to offer some discount coupons in the near future for customers buying multiple items.

I hope everyone is enjoying their new year and got off to a much better start than I did.

The cutest and tiniest alarm clock drawing.

A photo posted by Faber-Castell Official (@fabercastellglobal) on Nov 30, 2015 at 5:47am PST

 

Scrap paper.

A photo posted by amy duncan (@fourcornersdesign) on Dec 10, 2015 at 10:17am PST

 

I find winter trees so beautiful.

A photo posted by Brechje (@plndm) on Dec 10, 2015 at 10:57am PST

 

And these thistles too.

A photo posted by @zuzu365 on Dec 9, 2015 at 1:45pm PST

 

And coffee mmmm…

A photo posted by @nonnygreen on Dec 9, 2015 at 3:32pm PST

I need to start sending more snail mail…

A photo posted by Erica Choy (@erica_choy) on Dec 7, 2015 at 4:23am PST

 

I love everything about this sketch. 

A photo posted by Ольга Рубцова (@o_rubtsova) on Dec 6, 2015 at 2:24pm PST

 

I think Seth’s stuff is great and his pictures are full of mystery. 🙂

A photo posted by Seth Apter (@sethapter) on Dec 6, 2015 at 4:18pm PST

 

Gorgeous wolf skull study.

A photo posted by Elena Limkina (@limkina) on Dec 4, 2015 at 12:21am PST

 

Warrior.

A photo posted by Gamer (@horseman09) on Dec 4, 2015 at 6:05am PST

 

Black and white bridge photo taken by my friend Paul Kinehan that made me miss Switzerland a lot.

A photo posted by Paul Kinehan (@pkinehan) on Dec 4, 2015 at 11:32am PST

Obviously you don’t have to buy your coloring pages online.  Right now you can buy them at any craft or book store.  I think you can even buy them in the checkout line at your favorite grocery store.

There are some advantages to buying pages online though – aside from supporting your favorite artists:

• Instant download
• Print on a variety of papers or cardstock
• Print them as many times as you want
• Easier to pick and choose what you want

With digital downloads you get that instant gratification of receiving the item right now without having to wait for it to ship or without going to a store.  Being able to print on a variety of papers is also fantastic.  I like to print mine on heavy cardstock when I’m using colored pencils because it can handle a lot of layers of color.  You can print on watercolor or mixed media paper and you can even take the files to your local print shop and have them print on craft paper for a few cents a page.

Many coloring books are printed double sided, and if you like to pull the pages out you might have to choose which side you are going to color.  If you use markers they will most likely bleed through the paper and ruin the design on the other side.  Since the coloring books you purchase at the store are copyrighted you can’t legally make a copy of the page before you color it so it’s a one shot deal.  And what do you do if you buy the book and realize you only really like a few of the pages?

All that being said if you don’t have a printer or access to a print shop then digital downloads might not be for you.

I’ll be honest too – if a publisher asked me to do a book or wanted to feature my art in a coloring magazine I would probably say yes.  I’ve also bought coloring books myself because, lets face it, those store displays are so tempting.

Where do you prefer to get your coloring pages?