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Creative Play

Art Supplies

back-to-school supplies for mom

Back-to-school is such an exciting time.  We make sure the pants are not high-waters, everyone gets a new pair of shoes, and we get to go shopping for pens, pencils, notebooks, and hand sanitizer.  But, we also need to take a minute to acknowledge that it’s such a hard time for moms.  The house is so quiet and clean and there isn’t anything to do but sit around and be sad until your kids come bounding home from school, ready to eat a snack the size of a meal.  It’s just a really rough time and moms deserve some consolation goodies to fill up that quiet, clean hole her kids leave in the house all day. When we get the boys’ supplies ready for back-to-school, we take an inventory of things we already have and then shop for the things that aren’t crossed off the list.  Moms are exempt from

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Art

making time for creativity

One of the questions I’m asked most of is about my time.  How do you fit it all in?  Do you sleep?  I was actually asked that twice in the last three days.  It comes up a lot, so I thought I would share some thoughts on time and how I spend mine. First of all, if it looks like I fit it all in, like I get everything done that I want to get done, and like I always have it together, I can assure you that I don’t.  As with anyone else, I have things that slip through the cracks, things that fall into the black hole of procrastination, good intentions that are forgotten, and things that languish on my to-do list.  There are times I feel frustrated with the limitation of time.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to Jeff that I wish I

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Artistic Endeavors

creative play | bookbinding single pages

In my last box of goodies that came from across the pond from Julia of , I received several vintage and antique sketchbooks and drawing/oil papers.  She’s been on the hunt for those for me, so I could recreate some of the Kitchin sketches on old paper.  And I love old art supplies and she loves a challenging shopping list!  This particular sketchbook had amazing paper in it – thick with a good texture and slightly off-white with age.  It even had slightly uneven edges that added to the charm.  The only problem is the book wouldn’t stay open!  I mean, there was no way you could actually sketch in it, which is probably why it hadn’t been used.  It would just flip shut the moment you weren’t holding both sides open.  So, I decided to try my hand at bookbinding to make it useable. I meant to take a

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Art Supplies

creative play | customizing sketchbooks with fabric

I know I’ve already done a post on customizing sketchbooks (you can find that post here), but I spent a little bit of my creative playtime last week addressing something that bugged me about another style of sketchbook I use.  If you don’t have a sketchbook, I bet you keep some kind of book…a fitness journal, a diary, a scrapbook, a recipe book, a photo album.  You can definitely take this idea and use it for the kind of book(s) you keep. I love .  They have thick off-white paper, they lay flat, and they come in several great sizes for sketching and designing.  Buuuuuuut, they have a bright red spine!  I really don’t have anything against red, but it’s not my color and it really jumps out against my cool blues, greens, and whites. ranger notebook/sketchbook portrait | | landscape And you can see it through a cutout in

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Art

creative play | sketches with Calvin

Calvin has expressed an interest in art off and on for the past few years.  He’ll ask to paint with me or request that I buy him some art supplies or a sketchbook, but he hasn’t stayed motivated in that arena.  But, anytime he asks, I say yes.  I can see he has a natural inclination for it and I think his mind is well suited for creative work in some shape or form.  So, when he asked me if we could take an illustration class together, I pulled out my laptop and we started watching course trailers immediately. We found a class on Domestika – The Art of Sketching; Transforming Your Doodles into Art and it has been so much fun working on it together.  He took notes as the instructor was going over his influences and wanted to make sure we had all of the right tools to

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Creative Play

creative play | customizing a sketchbook

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my Kitchin sketchbooks, reading them, doing pencil studies of the sketches, and scanning each page.  Handling them has made me think about my own sketchbooks and how I approach keeping a record of how I see the world. Beyond admiring the artistry, I love how the sketchbooks are a uniform collection.  Aside from one that is a little larger, all of the books are the same size and covered in linen.  He signed the interior and put his address in addition to labeling the cover and spine with the year(s) the book was filled. It inspired me to go through my sketchbooks and be more intentional about seeing them as a part of a larger collection instead of as individual books.  I still like to have separate books for different mediums and purposes, but I want to be mindful of how they

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Artistic Endeavors

Creative play | making a cyanometer

Have you ever heard of a cyanometer?  I hadn’t either until I was doing a random search for vintage color wheels and came across one.  It’s a device that measures the blueness of the sky!  How perfect is that for someone like me who 1.) loves blue, 2.) loves studying color, and 3.) loves painting skies?  Pretty darn perfect. The picture above is the original cyanometer that was invented by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and Alexander von Humboldt in 1789.  It’s a circle with 53 colored sections ranging from light to dark.  Isn’t it just beautiful?  I feel like it’s a work of art in and of itself. I looked around online to see if I could find any information about making a cyanometer.  What specific blue should be used?  Or what colors should be mixed?  I didn’t find any tutorials that were helpful. (One used paint chips from a hardware

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Art

creative play | sketchbook tour

I’ve shared in the past that I have a hang-up when it comes to sketchbooks.  Several hang-ups, actually.  I always want to be the person who is filling up stacks of sketchbooks, making notes, sketches, and drawings, capturing thoughts and ideas, practicing.  I’ve gotten much better about it over the past couple of years and I actually filled a notebook with a journal and did several paintings and sketches when I went to Europe in the fall of 2019.  I’ve been more consistent with getting my sketchbooks out to draw quick thumbnails before starting a painting, to make notes when I’m reading books or taking an art class, or to doodle. Here are some of sketchbook hang-ups… I feel like there is a bit of magic that happens with certain paintings that is difficult to repeat.  Some paintings just end up being very special.  What if one of those paintings

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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May 20th, 2026 at 1pm EST

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