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Hello, everyone! Welcome to my corner of the Internet. I’m hoping that you can find some comfort here by knowing that I am a lifelong artist, teacher, and orderer of arts and crafts supplies for over 30 years! I only include in my site products that I have used , had my students learn with, and can promise that they are worthwhile, reasonably priced tools that will not confuse you, rip you off, or fail to do what they are intended to do.

Sometimes the hardest part of venturing into a new field – especially one so dependent upon tools – is learning which ones work, and which ones just cost a lot of money, and deliver painful lessons.

This website will, hopefully, make your initial journey into the doing of arts and crafts more exciting than scary-more fun than expensive-and always positive! Welcome.

Shipping is always free, by the way!

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Our Materials

Sketching

From loose sketching with pencil or charcoal, to formal pen and ink works as seen here, drawing is an essential beginning to most arts and crafts. Sketching quilt patterns, drawing borders in your journal or scrapbook, planning a Christmas card for linoleum block printing etc. It all begins with drawing. Here, at my website, I’ve grouped both drawing materials and the papers that are their “grounds”. All the combinations of pencil/pen/charcoal/paper make a difference, and can be exciting to explore! So get to it! You have an adventure ahead of you.

The pen and ink I’ve shown here is an historic building in the town I grew up in. Their historical society asked me to draw, in pen and ink, some of their most historic buildings. This piece was done with a crowquill pen, using india ink. The method of reproducing values is called hatching, cross-hatching and stipple.

NOTE: Never be afraid to “fail”. Failures are an essential learning tool, and ALWAYS improve your work, if you listen to them.

Painting

Color is astounding! Learning to control it is a difficult challenge, but somehow delicious!

Painting is almost the opposite of drawing, looked at in a certain way. It uses masses of color, not lines of black on white. That alone is huge. Some artists begin with splotches of paint rather than lines! Mass versus Line. Color versus Black and White. Transparent or translucent layering, creating multiple planes, as apposed to a dot meandering on a simple plane, which is, in fact, a line!

Painting can be scary, but very exciting, as long as you’re not afraid to “fail”. Failure is an essential part of the learning process, and often becomes a surprising success, so keep an open mind! The fits and starts of learning color are important to the journey. So learn the color wheel, and try to make gray when mixing blue and orange, green and red, and yellow and purple. Your first challenge!

Collage

Collages, in the centuries-long history of art, are new, while the creation of a successful collage follows the same rules of composition, balance, contrast, etc. as the more traditional works of art embody. Most commonly, collages are begun by gluing a series of ripped or cut papers to a surface in an interesting pattern. Those papers can be magazine pages, newspaper, decorative papers, even tissue or metallic papers. Thread, yarn, twine, or marble dust! You get the idea. The possibilities are endless, scrapbook heaven, and rely on imagination; so they can be easy or very challenging! The variations include printing, peeling, painting or drawing on. In short, there are few rules in collage, which makes them fun and exciting – realistic or abstract.They live in uncharted territory!

Printing

Printing is an enormous category in Arts and Crafts. That’s probably why I chose the example above: a lighthearted, comical example of printing as a part of mixed media. The painted ground, showing water/sand/sky, is overlaid with many chickens all running in the same direction: a stampede! The printed portion (the chickens) was originally a small linoleum block of “Three French Hens” created for a Christmas card. Linoleum block printing is a simple process easily done with few and inexpensive materials, and creates a “plate” that can be printed indefinitely. It’s a great printing medium and technique. Another easily created technique is monoprinting, which is done by creating a plate using plexiglas, glass, or metal. It is printed (with printing ink) drawn into, or painted on, with it’s surface covered with a fresh paper, and rubbed while it’s still wet. While it’s a very immediate, straitforward method of printing, it allows only one print. Etching and Lithography are very complex, using expensive materials, so I won’t supply them.