I have long had a fascination with budget friendly art materials. I have always liked getting the best bang for my buck.

I reviewed the Royal & Langnickel FlipKit. Which I now and forever will call the flippy floppy watercolors. The Flippy Floppy is a set that I continue to reach for despite the fact that I hate the flippiness of it. The flip out pans are annoying and when wet, smear paint on the bottom of the Flippy Floppy set up and then all over my hands. Annoying. Yet the colors are nice- they rewet easily and are vibrant and act as watercolors should.

Now the Flippy Floppy kit is a white labeled set up from a factory in China. And as such if you look for other brands that look like this set, you’ll find a variety of prices and options. Buy the best priced option.

White label factories make an item and rebrand or repackage that item for whoever orders them. An example. The place where I used to work had white label ice cream. Customers used to complain that this company was ripping off Ben & Jerry’s because the flavors were literally the same. What they didn’t know was that B&J made that company’s store brand ice cream. They contracted with B&J to make the ice cream but with few inclusions. So less banana, less chocolate chunks, and even less chocolate covered cherries. You get the picture.

Another reviewer on YouTube called up a bunch of the companies and found that these are all made in the same factory in China. Better brands have more pigment and fewer fillers.

Anyway, you can find the video review of the Flippy Floppy set up here:

I just put up a review of the Mei Liang 48 color watercolor set. Mine was in the purple box and came bundled with a water brush. 12 of the 48 colors are shimmery or metallic. These colors are nice but I will never use them except for art journaling and on occasion. The other 36 colors are standard colors for a set of that size.

I see the usefulness of a large watercolor set as mainly for beginners. Especially those who are interested in en plein air or urban sketching. This lets you test out 36 colors on the go and see which colors are right for you. You can figure out what you can mix wit what colors and which colors you are drawn to.

This is also a great set of colors for art journaling- the colors are vibrant and easy to use, they give you a huge range of colors that let you really decide what colors are going to be perfect in your art journal.

These colors are nice too, vibrant and very little filler. They move as each of the colors should on the page.

The tin is thin and easily dented but sturdy enough to protect the colors.

Anyway, check out my video on them here:

There are some well known brands that likely use the same factories for their watercolors. A way to tell (though not definitively) is to look at the molded plastic pieces and how the paint is presented. A well known art journaler brand has clearly switched to a new factory. the reviews on their new colors are much less favorable than their old version.

I have a mere 15 pages left to my current Every Thing Every Where Journal. This is crunch time for finalizing the prep for the new journal. Luckily I started the prep when I had 100 pages left. I wrote about that already.

What I want to explore today is the final stages of a ETEW Journal and how I close out this journal and finalize the prep for the new journal. The big things are done- the cover is decorated- snazzy skulls, room made for collage, pocket and elastic added.

Now I look at what I used, what I didn’t use, what did and didn’t work, and what I need to adapt or change for this new journal.​Let’s look at what did work first.

In my previous journal I made art on the right side of the book and wrote on the wrinkly left side where there was less support for the paper. I switched to prepping the left side of the spreads and writing on the right side of the spread. his worked better. Even if the paper was wrinkled, having the support of the rest of the paper and the cover flat on the work surface made a big difference in clear writing. I will continue to do this in the next ETEW Journal, I may also play around with prepared spreads as well.

Using a cheap 5Below journal has it’s limitations, light washes worked okay. It handled fountain pen ink but the paper was really too rough for my extra fine and fine nibs, and really had a rough time with the dip pen nibs. It’s great with crayons, colored pencils and other dry media. My wet washes required that I iron my pages, and that is not a step I want to do all that often. The thinness of the paper meant that occasionally ink and other wetter media would soak through. I have 2 more of theses sketchbooks to use as journals, I plan to use the next one up but I’m going to look for another brand of inexpensive journal (something on a budget) that can handle a bit more of what I do.

What did I use? I used 3 months of the planner section, plenty of EF and F nibs- I’m in love with spidery thin lines combined with fat wide lines making the images pop with contrast.

In the new journal I’ll set up the 6 months again, because it’s important to have 6 months viewable at a time. I rarely used it but I did reference it for things like- days when work would run late and my medical appointments or days I’d need to request off of work. I used these pages to remember to request time off.

At this point I’ll transfer over the next 3 months into my planner section, I’ll make pages for post and video ideas, as well as a few pages for ideas for Less is More Healthy.  I will also start my materials testing in the new journal. When I hit 5 pages left I’ll start using the new journal on the go and the old journal will stay at home on my desk, at this point it is almost too precious to leave the house, but I remind myself that it is a tool, a precious tool, but a well used tool, that only gets better and more precious with use. So I’ll force myself to wait until there are a mere 5 pages remaining.

I don’t know where I first learned of making ink wash images. High school probably. We did a lot of work with pen and ink, it seems directly up Ms. F’s alley to use an inexpensive and yet extremely satisfying method to teach us about shadows.

It lends itself to portrait, landscapes and urban sketching. It’s a great method for fast loose images but also more detailed realism as well.

The look of ink wash is easy to spot, it looks a lot like watercolors but in black and white. The warmth of the ink flows through the image and on the right paper has a touch of granulation, depending on the quality of your India Ink.

It has a look to it that I love and have loved for years.

It’s easy to do- put water into bottles (I did 40 ml in a 60ml squeeze bottle from Dollar Tree) add in drops of India ink to the level of darkness you desire. I did 40drops in the 1 bottle my light wash. Then 70 drops in the 2 bottle my darker wash. Generally speaking, you double the amount of ink ink in each subsequent bottle of water. You can range this out to have greater gradation, but at a certain point the gray wash looks black.

I do 2 level of darkness because I can layer my washes to get more range of dark but I can never get the lights back. When I first learned about ink wash we did 3 levels of wash. I’ve seen people do 5.

Two is enough for me.

At this point you have a large amount of wash mixed up. You can decant it into smaller containers, dollar tree makes small glass jars that I use for dipping pens and small brushes into, they hold about 10ml of liquid. These are great for carrying around small amounts of wash.

Or you can pick up a cheap set of water brushes- I’m using Making Memories brand from Michaels, which are the single worst water brush I’ve ever used- they suck color and water up inside the brush and mold!* Gross. BUT for filling with color? That is where they excel. Because we don’t care if they suck some of the ink wash back up into the handle, these are perfect for ruining with ink wash.

And yes, putting ink wash into a good water brush WILL likely ruin it. It can also stain brushes.

The good about ink wash- the shade of gray stays put, once it is dry it does not move. It is permanent. It does NOT lift or move. You can layer watercolors over it. Once dry you can draw on top of it.

Making art with this works in two ways for me- in the more traditional manner, I sketch with a pen first then I go back in and use the brush and ink wash to layer in shade. I use my lightest wash first then add in the darker wash. I can layer my lighter wash over itself to create more gradation. I can deepen the shadows through layering my darker wash.

Once each layer of wash is dry it’s set in place.

I also use it on top of my random watercolor backgrounds.

Ink wash is a great tool to have in any art journaling tool kit.

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A note on this video review: I purchased this pen with my own money,  Ackerman didn’t sponsor this video, and I doubt they would like this video.

This pen is not for someone who does not like to tinker with their pen. In order to reset the pen you must take it apart and use a bamboo skewer to push the feed out the front of the pen. Then you must push the nib and feed into the pen at the right spot so the nib will seat itself into the pen properly and so the nib and fee will be aligned.

Mine was not set properly and the nib and feed were out of alignment with the original location of the nib, this caused the nib to be too far out and to not sit properly on the feed. Annoying. I had loads of railroading and blobs. Awful.

Once the pen was set up properly it works really well. I ordered a few new feeds to adapt a few of my other pens to this.

Anyway, my video does not show this set up process, but is me talking out the above and testing the pen before and after resetting the nib and feed.