I find it interesting (and disconcerting) that household matters start to nosedive in clumps. Within a ridiculously short period, our oven firecracker-ed and died (so scary), our bath tub drain stopped up, our faucet water turned a stomach-turning shade of brown. I could go on, but the onslaught has been punishing. My poor mom, she arrived from Los Angeles yesterday to a fully dysfunctional house.
It’s as though the house elves are taunting, “Take that!! Can you handle this??”
Luckily, the drama has been fairly short-lived, and we have a new electric range, the second bottle of Drano solved the tub issue (sorry environment), and the city inspector just notified me that there had been some fire hydrant testing going on which caused the iron ore and sediments to stir up in the pipe mains. The water is a less offensive beige now, and should start clearing up in a little bit.
When I start to feel defeated by outer circumstances that I can’t control, it seems counterintuitive but I like to give things away. I recently gifted a friend a set of watercolor paints, and it seemed to make her so happy, my mood soared by a thousand leagues.
That reminded me that I have this other set that I’ve been saving…for what, I don’t know, but it’s a beautiful gouache collection. I actually already have the very same set that I haven’t used up, so this was initially meant as back-up because I adore this brand so much and had this irrational fear that it might get discontinued. However, it’s clear to me that it’s going to end up sitting in my paint cabinet for years to come, so I want to offer it up as a giveaway.
This Caran D’Ache set is what I started painting with when I first decided to get back into all the “creative” activities I let fall to the wayside while I was working full-time. With the impending launch of Sewing Happiness, I’ve been thinking back to that time a lot. Remember how I was so affected by the negative review on Amazon? As if to make me feel extra relieved, I found out that the book got a starred rating from Library Journal and the review was so kind and uplifting, I was smiling for hours.
I used these paints here and here and here. Good times.
Anyway, would anyone like some gouache paint? It’s great for kids as well, and the colors are incredibly rich and vibrant. As per usual, any comment would do, but I’d be keen to know if there’s some sort of previously loved activity that you’ve let fall to the wayside that you’d like to pick up again. My intention isn’t to make you feel guilty about it, but to (I hope) remind you how much you enjoyed it.
I’ll leave the giveaway open until the end of next week — let’s say April 14th. I’ll announce the winner the next day and international entries are always awesome. Good luck!
Photography. It was the first non-writing creative thing that I picked up as an adult, and discovering that I had a small amount of native creative talent completely reshaped my vision of myself. I spent years with my camera practically glued to my side (thank goodness for the advent of digital cameras, or I’d have spent a veritable fortune on film!), loving the way interacting with my camera changed my perceptions of the world, and then…my daughter was born, and I couldn’t figure out how to focus intently on her while looking through a viewfinder, so I set it aside for a while, discovered sewing, and have never picked it back up. Oh, for another lifetime to explore other creative media!
Would love love love to win these gorgeous paints! I have a three year old and we’ve just started painting together. He is so uninhibited with his colors and willingness to try every combination. It’s wonderful inspiration to my very inside the box worldview. Thanks!
I love making herbal remedies, but I’ve really gotten out of the habit of making them in the past couple of years (since having a baby!). My herbal supplies cabinet is sadly dusty and neglected. I hope to revive my craft at some point soon!
Those paints look lovely.
Drawing. I loved to draw through high school and loved art classes, but then I went to college and didn’t take any fine arts classes, then there was work… and I prioritized any free time to other hobbies. My most loved hobbies – sewing, reading – made it through, and cooking and gardening have made their way in, but drawing fell away. I got a watercolor set as a present a few years ago and this year am finally trying to get back into painting and drawing a bit. I’d love to try gouache!
Before my son was born I painted a tiny watercolour picture each week of my pregnancy, using a kids’ novelty mini paintbox that I carried around with me (eight colours, a 5cm brush!). Some were landscapes, some were household objects – just whatever was in front of me when painting day arrived. I did the same while pregnant with my daughter, but haven’t used the tiny paintbox since. Your gouache set is beautiful – what a lovely giveaway!
With three kids I’m going to say reading (to myself!). I used to love to sit down with a good book.
I would be so happy to win this!!! I just finished the beginner watercolour class on Creativebug and I’m hooked.
I love embroidering but it often falls down the list of creative activities after seeing, knitting, baking, painting…
Good morning, Sanae, and what a wet grey one it is! I think the sun is supposed to show up again soon though!
I would love a chance to win this paint set. It’s funny, since joining IG due to SVE2016, I have been attracted by a lot of artists’ works. Well, I can say the same for Pinterest I suppose. The point is, I feel the pull of the paint again even though I have a load of things to sew. I think this summer though would be a good time to paint outside.
Glad to hear the house elves have gone back to behaving! And congrats on the starred review – woohooo!
Photography, painting, sketching. My life has been out of whack for a while and fun creative pursuits have fallen to the wayside. I was sewing less for a while too but am slowly picking it up again, a few muslins for me (it is really hard to get the scout tee to fit!), some skirts and tops for my daughter.
I find it hard to create anything when life throws you a big unexpected curveball. Yet I know making helps. I’ll put my sketchbook in my bag today, perhaps carrying it with me will lead to being able to pick it up again.
Sketching and painting…ohh and I used to be obsessed with any kind of work with clay. Throwing on the wheel, sculpting, molds..anything. What a lovely set of paints ?
My artist daughter would love these! I feel like sewing is the thing that I gave up at some point and have started again so I’m glad that I’m back to it now. 🙂
the first thing that popped into my head …my grandfather who was an artist, painted with water colors mostly never approved of me painting in oils. he would say “you must practice your water colors. oil painting is not for ladies” ?
I majored in music in college and it was always a part of my life. Right now I am a SAHM of four young children and can’t seem to find the time to do the things I loved to do – sing in a choir and play the piano. And the guitar – I taught myself to play while in college but i haven’t picked it up in years.
I would love to win those paints for me! But I would share with my daughters. My artistic endeavors that I’m trying to get back into are drawing and painting. Before children I had so much more time to create. These days I tend to make time for sewing and my knitting travels along with me but I don’t often set aside time to draw or paint something. Your blog has been very inspirational and now I just need to make time and set pencil or brush to paper.
I used to do math, specifically engineering, but then I got chronic headaches and I haven’t done anything with it for years. I loved it though, it was relaxing. I have two thick textbooks on my shelf and I hope someday that I’ll start them again.
Somewhat off topic if we’re talking about creative adventures, but a plumber told me to pour a cup of bleach down the drain every month or so and I’d never get those nasty hair clogs again. It works.
Oh, I would love to win the set – my (becoming 7 yo next week) daughter loves to paint – and apparently is very talented. I can not draw a cat myself 🙂
The activity I miss is to teach her my reading in my language. We started over a year ago, but then school started and she had to focus on reading Norwegian. I decided to take a break from Russian in order to avoid confusion, but I do realize now I missed it. I hope to continue in a near future 🙂
I’d Love to get back into crocheting. I have a bedspread ready to go. its getting colder down here, maybe a good Project for some Winter crocheting in Front of the tv
I’ve just picked up my yoga practice again. And have been doing water colors with my daughter every day after school. We just leave them out and it’s thrilling to find her painting early morning before school, would love to add these into the mix.
Banjo. I love old-time banjo as well as Scruggs-style, have a great teacher now, and I’ll probably end up playing with other folks in assisted living by the time I’m good enough, but it’s the journey that matters! It’s great to be a beginner at something as a senior citizen!
I can’t draw or paint but I love making images of rocks anyway! I love the shapes and making them in pen and then watercoloring them in, well it feels good:)
Dance. I danced all through childhood and have taken both tap and ballet as an adult. Four kiddos later and it’s been a few years since I’ve taken a class. I’d love to take a class again once my youngest is a bit older. These paints are gorgeous!
I hope to get back into sewing more. Lately I’ve been knitting a lot, which has taken up almost all of my free time. While I do enjoy playing with yarn, I really miss messing around with fabric!
I’d like to get back into sewing properly – it has been such a spasmodic event but I have such a stash of fabric and patterns!! Would love to win this paint set
Oh, I love everything car an d’-ache that I’ve ever tried! So yummy. I used to do lots of intuitive drawings, with graphite on big sheets of coloured paper, moving the graphite stick over the paper gently for ages until a picture started to emerge. I would never know what would appear and it always offered me some insight or inspiration. I remember lots of bird-women at one stage, encouraging me to be freer and fly higher! It must be more than 10 years since I did one of those drawings, I’d love to try it again, I think I will! Thanks for the inspiration and reminder ?
I more or less had to give up doing any type of drawing or painting after the kids came along, as well as any instrumental music. I would sure love to be able to pick it all back up again. Thanks for the opportunity, and for the incentive!
Hi Sanae. I love your paintings. It’s you and your paintings that inspire me to register for watercolour painting lessons. Don’t have much talent in this field :p but I really love watercolour. Thank you for the giveaway, the set looks good. After seeing your gouache paintings, I’d like to try my hands on this someday.
I have been silently reading your blog, but I couldn’t resist this give away!!! it looks very yummy. When I was a teenager, I used to love paint with watercolour…not that I was a master in the field, but it did relaxed me and calmed me during the turbulent hormonal change gap. I think I would love to take back some of that nice feeling that a paint brush, colour, paper and some water can give me!. Congratulations on the release of your new book!!!! wishing you the best, It is going to be epic :)x
I’ve recently decided to try my hand at painting again. Thus far I’ve managed to produce a paper garden’s worth of blobby orange flower thingies.
It would be lovely to paint with these 🙂
I would love to pick up drawing with pen and ink again. I always have long periods in which I think that I can’t do it, that I’m no good at it. And then, when I just start, I love it. Thanks for the reminder!
I’d love to spend more time outside, getting to know the woodland plants by name and learning the natural histories of all the life around me.
What lovely paints! I have recently rediscovered the joys of luxuriating in some time by myself almost every day, either to rest (harder than it sounds, right?) or to do something/anything creative depending on my energy level. I have also rediscovered how lifechanging it is just to walk outside and get fresh air every morning, even on the coldest and grayest of days.
I played the clarinet for years and took lessons even after college. However, my son was born and was horribly afraid of any loud noise. I tried to play and get him used to it, but it just didn’t work. He’s old enough now to have outgrown that. I’m horribly out of practice, but am slowly trying to get something resembling pretty sounds out of the clarinet again.
Playing the violin. I really loved it and used to spend two or more hours a day practicing. Then came grad school and jobs and kids…and I haven’t picked it up in years. For my birthday I’m having my instrument repaired and I plan to pick it up casually as often as I can.
Hi Sanae, such a lovely giveaway. I could not resist entering. I’ve always looked at watercolouring as something to do in future. Maybe this might change it and make it a now 🙂
I am lucky enough to be doing all the hobbying things I want to be, albeit less frequently than I would wish. As with anything, there is that money factor, not having access to nice, reasonably priced crafty items (fabric, cardmaking things etc) where I am. That work thing also gets in the way, but not as much as it used to. There was a period when I hopped from uni into the work force that I had to give up pretty much everything as work hours were long and it was too mentally and phycially draining to even think of anything aside from the basic eat, sleep, work, repeat. Life choices saw me on a much more even keel, and I am so glad I made those decisions before I got too stuck in my ways to not. So now I take the time to bake, read, sew, cardmake etc, and I am much saner/happier for it.
I know this doesn’t count as a craft, but I really really want to get back to doing yoga regularly. I used to do it four times a week and now I never do it, and Iso desperately want to get back into it. Some lifestyle change, better planning…that’s what I need.
The giveaway sounds lovely. I would love to win it for my daughter who would drool over these colours.
Gah! Blogging! Blogging has fallen by the wayside for me, and I feel bad about it. In fact, maybe I should write a post right now…
Thanks for the giveaway Sanae! I’d love to give gouache a try.
I would love to win this set. I used to paint when I was younger, but left it behind after university. It would be fun to get back to it.
When I have a moment I grab a piece of paper and sketch – anything really – just to empty my Head. Or I make silly poetry decorated with a rose border. Would love to win these paints – those colors make my heart sing!
Binge reading for pleasure. How silly of me to forget the restorative power of sinking completely into a good story, particularly when super stressed, under-rested and over-caffeinated. Btw, It was “Echo” by Pam Munoz Ryan that caused me to remember this. I started the book before bed and could not stop reading it, so i didn’t put it down until I’d finished it in the wee hours of the next morning… A different form of nourishment 🙂
Reading…. I love to read, and read almost anything (except historical bibliographies), but ever since my days at university I haven’t read as much as I would like to.
It’s as if all the assigned reading took away my reading joy.
But also drawing and painting. I used to do that a lot, and only recently dug out my watercolours again.
My old ones are very old and some of the colours are all but used up. I’d love a new set. ?
I’ve actually had a hard time getting motivated to make anything lately. I haven’t been knitting or sewing or working on embroidery. I’m trying to get myself to work on things, but I’ve just been feeling bleh for months. I finally did some watercolor painting last week, after buying materials like 6 years ago. Tonight I picked up a pair of legwarmers I started knitting months ago for my girls. Hopefully they will still fit next winter as it’s already spring and very warm here.
Hello from another Seattleite! Your give aways are grand! Seeing a brand new open paintbox gives me the same thrill I had seeing a brand new open crayon box when I was a kid. Endless possibilities!!
I had let my sewing fade away over the last year or so, until I suddenly realized that as my daughter ages, her excitement at receiving a mama-made item will one day suddenly disappear. This certainly happened to my mother when I was a pre-teen. Recently, I have been sewing her dress after dress to her great delight (and to mine).
I love to sew, but my daughter, well, she loves to paint, so I thought I’d add my comment.
My daughter brought home “Little Kunoichi, the ninja girl” from the library this week and I fell in love with it. I absolutely love the illustrations too. She has had a dream of becoming a ninja girl too when she grows up. I’d love to put these watercolors to use if I win them. After having two wonderful little girls, I have let my creative craftiness take a back seat unfortunately, but I’ve recently been inspired to start again.
I lost the full use of my dominant hand, but it is incredible how I have a spare on the other side. So I am learning to write and create with the spare. I am working on better control of movement. Painting might be an interesting next step.