art

How to Save on Art Supplies

June 14, 2017 By Mary Newton Leave a Comment

As fun as art is, it really breaks the bank. Whether you deal in watercolors or oil pastels, the supplies you need – and especially the high-quality ones you want – are expensive enough to put a significant dent in your bank account. If you are looking to increase your art supply collection or you’re just getting started, here are a few ways you can save money on art supplies.

1. Know your priorities.

Focus on spending the big bucks on art supplies that are the most important to you. Maybe you prefer high-quality paper over expensive paints, or vice versa. Regardless, focusing on one or two things that are the most important to you, and that you will use all the time, like paper cutters – rather than just buying into the next trend or extra items you can technically survive without – will keep both you and your bank account happy.

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2. Buy singles instead of packs.

Paints, markers, pens, brushes, pencils, and much more will always be less expensive when you buy them individually. As an added bonus, buying individual art supplies gives you the ability to select only the colors you want, meaning you can prioritize which colors are most important and avoid repeating colors you already have.

3. Try out sample packs.

If you are new to your art hobby, trying sample packs is a great way to test out a variety of art supplies without dedicating money to whole sets. This rule applies to not just paints – like this set of 24 Watercolor Sample Dots from DaVinci – but also papers, fountain pen and calligraphy inks, and many other kinds of art supplies. Some are based around a single brand, while others will choose a color scheme or supply type. This is also a good option for artists who want to try a new brand but do not want to invest significant amounts of money in new art supplies.

4. Go for the art supply warehouses.

Skip shopping at Amazon or proprietary stores as much as possible. Your best bet for inexpensive supplies will always be supply warehouses that carry a variety of art supplies from a variety of brands. This is similar to shopping at Costco rather than Wal-Mart. For example, the table below compares the price of an 8mL tube of Winsor & Newton’s Cotman Watercolor in Black (Lamp Black or Ivory Black) across eight different online stores, including both standard shops and art supply shops.

Store	Price
Jerry’s Artarama	$2.77
Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff	$2.89
Utrecht	$2.77
Michael’s	$4.69
Amazon	$5.44
Blick	$2.77
Winsor & Newton	$4.62
Art Supply Warehouse	$2.69

5. Shop sales and clearance.

Sales will always save you money – especially if they are sales at art supply warehouses like the ones shown above – and clearance guarantees products for less. While it is always exciting to get that new product as soon as it comes out, it is often worth it to wait for that item to go to clearance. As an added bonus, shopping clearance puts lesser known brands in front of you that may be just as quality as the ones you know and use.

6. Rock those DIYs.

You would be surprised at the sheer amount of art supplies you can create yourself to avoid spending money. Some examples include making your own palette, – putting plastic wrap on a dinner plate, using a sandwich bag, or even following this DIY – learning to mix your own colors, or even using Crayola markers for watercolor. Making art supplies yourself from items you already have will cut down spending on frivolous items, ultimately saving you more money.

7. Review, review, review.

Never be afraid to spend time on the internet. Whether that means comparing prices across multiple sites or digging through products reviews, you will be better off knowing what you’re getting into before you actually buy it. This also helps you know you are getting the best bang for your buck, giving you a feel of the product quality and its correlation with the price.

Art supplies are expensive, but that does not mean you have to break the bank to buy them. With a little digging and a little time, your collection will grow without having to sacrifice quality or price.

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Photo: Puzzle Warehouse

Make Art (or Other Useful Stuff) from Junk: Strange Ways to Make Money

March 29, 2017 By Jennifer Derrick 1 Comment

I have a friend who works at a tire shop. When possible, he takes some of the old tires and uses them to create art. His latest creation is a big, whimsical bug sitting in a lawn chair. There is another person in town who makes art from discarded yard supplies like mowers, garden hoses, and rakes. I’ve seen exhibitions of art made from trash, street signs, aluminum cans, computer parts, and discarded furniture. Any sort of junk is fair game for art projects, it seems.

I’ve also seen people take seemingly useless junk and repurpose it into useful stuff. One guy makes fish tanks out of old CRT computer monitors. Someone else collects discarded building materials from construction sites and make birdhouses and wooden lawn art. Another person turns discarded doors into decorative tables. These people see that trash could become something else and they put their creativity to work creating useful stuff from garbage.

Make Art From Junk

If you want to make art or useful things out of junk, you’re only limited by your creativity and the materials to which you have access. If you’re a computer technician by day, you probably have access to all kinds of computer parts that may be useful. A contractor probably has access to wood or wiring. Easy access to materials makes things easier, but if you need materials you don’t come across every day, there are ways to get them. You can trawl yard sales or curbs on trash day. You can go to a scrap metal dealer or junk yard and offer to buy some parts you need. You can ask your friends if they have the materials you need. It may require some thought, but you can get the parts you need.

When thinking about what to create, there are two approaches. First, you can look at the stuff you have and think about what you can make from it. If you have a ton of CD’s lying around, think about what those might become. Second, you can think about what you’d like to make and then think of what materials you need to do it. Maybe you have a great idea for a desktop organizer. Think about what you can use to make that vision a reality.

How to Make Money With Art

Once you’ve created your items, you need to turn them into money. Here are some ways you can do that:

Enter contests: Ready Made Magazine routinely offers a contest to create something useful out of a specified item. They call it the, “MacGyver Challenge” and you can see some of the past winners here. You can find contests in other places, as well. There are contests that require you to make something useful, as well as judged art competitions. Prizes usually range from a little cash or something like a free t-shirt or subscription, to help launching your product into the mainstream or a public exhibition of your art.
Sell on the web: Online sales are a great way to sell your creations. Etsy.com and eBay provide ready made sales platforms, but you can create your own website if you’d rather have more control or features.
Become an artist: If what you make is art, you can pursue the life of an artist. You can sell your work at galleries and through exhibitions and you can try for commissions to create larger installations in public venues. You can also open your own gallery if you become successful enough.
Write books or teach: Once you’ve mastered creating stuff, you can teach others to create, as well. You can produce books that show others how to make your creations, or you can teach a class through local community school program.
Sell locally: You can sell your creations at local craft fairs, or at other shows like bridal expos, for example (if your items are wedding themed). Look around your area for upcoming events that match your creations and look into becoming a vendor. Some local stores may also be open to carrying your items if you’re willing to split the proceeds.
Turn it into a career: There are some people who say that redesigning is a career of the future. For years companies have hired designers to create new products. Now with the environmental crisis, supply costs escalating, and the rising costs of trash disposal, more and more companies are looking for people who can turn failed projects, outdated equipment, and returns of broken items into new, salable products. If this sort of thing comes easily to you, you might be able to market yourself as a “re-designer.”

If you have enough creativity to see art or useful stuff in the trash, you can make a little extra money or maybe even embark on a new career. Find something you enjoy making and that you can reliably obtain materials for and then let your creativity go wild.

Photos: Anita Hart and Celeste Lindell

Art and Money

June 8, 2010 By David G. Mitchell 4 Comments

I have been fortunate to have known a lot of creative people over the years. I count writers and musicians and many other “creatives” among my friends. In years gone by, I was a partner in a record label and I managed bands. Today, I do a little writing myself, as you may have noticed.

Some of the creative people I know are fortunate to be able to earn a living with their art. Others invest their time and money in their craft knowing that they may never be published or that no one will ever hear their songs. Whatever level of success my friends have enjoyed in the past, and whatever success may come their way in the future, they all put their heart and soul into whatever it is that they do.

To the best of my knowledge, none of them are driven by a desire for great wealth. Of course, none of them would turn away from it either. Rather, they are driven by the need to self-express.

Art is like that. If you have it in you, you need to let it out. If you do not have it in you, you cannot manufacture it. If your art is motivated by a desire for fame, or wealth or anything but the need to express it, chances are you will never succeed as an artist.

Every year hundreds of thousands of books are published and the odds of being published as a new writer are very slim. In reality, 99% of us do not write well enough to attract a publisher or an agent and the remaining 1% of us usually has to be very lucky to be noticed. You have to go into writing with that reality in mind, but that should not stop anyone from trying to write or from trying to improve their craft.

Thousands of bands try every year to “get signed.” Few ever will and most of those few will not earn enough money to cover the advance that their label gave them to make a record. So what? That should not stop musicians from practicing and playing or songwriters from writing songs.

Look at any form of art — writing, visual arts, music, dance, film making, wood turning, and everything else is creative — and the odds of finding financial success as an artist are very slim. Real artists, however, do not care about those odds. They have something to express, something to share, something that they cannot keep inside themselves without feeling incomplete, and so they create, even if it costs them time and money to do so.

Art should not be about the money. The economics of art and its creation will sort themselves out in the marketplace after the artwork has been created. If the artist can be content creating for personal satisfaction, the artist can be content generally.

Are you creative? Do you create because you think you will someday grow rich from your art or do you create because it is part of your DNA such that you would not be you if you did not devote some time out of your day, your week or your month to your craft? Is art without commercial success satisfying?

Putting the Scrap back into the Art of Scrapbooking

June 8, 2008 By Ann Hartter 7 Comments

I hopped into the craft store for paint supplies and found myself staring at a display across the aisle as I was checking out. “Designer Scrapbooking” said the banner. Little cellophane pockets were filled with cardstock flowers with little glittery plastic jewels nestled in the center, a paper child with joints that moved, and fabric stickers in three dimensions. Buttons and paper and stamps, fancy-shaped whole punches. And I realized as I was staring, that scrapbooking is no longer scrapbooking. For one thing, there’s no scrap.

Once upon a time, I found a scrapbook in a dark corner of our storage shed. I chewed the stem of an oversized grass stalk while browsing a book put together by my mother’s mother, an ornate collection of photos, wrapping paper, pressed flowers and ribbon. I read letters, studied postage stamps and handwriting, marveled faded photography.

What weren’t on the page were little metal brads with things that spin or puffy letters announcing what each page was about. There weren’t die-cut shapes, stickers or rubber-stamped flowers.

There were photos cut around the figures, there were little blossoms of gift tags with strings threaded through a button, with stems of ribbon braids. Wrapping paper photo frames were adorned with a little note about the package that it had wrapped, and flowers pressed with all their vividness tucked behind clear overlays, also with wrapping paper photo frames, kind of like little windows.

There has been a long evolution since the days of my grandmother, where ladies’ groups shared ideas on how to reuse common items into clever, even sellable objects, to today, where such practices are considered crafts, and are catered to through chains and manufacturers so that you can buy new bags of popsicle sticks and shapes already cut out from papers, where reuse has changed from everyday living to an environmental movement.

Today, scrapbooking is about the combination of personal memories and art. Craft stores also carry everything an artist might need. In fact, I am happy to include crafters under the umbrella of artists, and therefore the scrapbooker as well. Whether or not you make and design the pieces yourself, you are designing and assembling the pages. You are taking in hand the aesthetics of collage art. Creativity portal describes collage as “compositions of various elements (such as paper, wood, fabric, feathers, leaves, and other found objects) pasted down with an adhesive glue or paint.” Scrapbook artists put their collages together in a binding and call it a scrapbook, or memory book, or they frame it as a one-of-a-kind, made-just-for-you gift.

Serious scrapbookers, like any serious artist, spends thousands each year on supplies and materials. Unlike an artist, who continues to use the same methods and supplies as the thousands of years of artists before him, a scrapbooker can go back to scrapbooking roots and save these thousands.

One way is to just stop throwing things in the garbage but into your scrap stash instead, but that’s the extreme “green” version which requires quite a few stretches in creativity. The scrapbooking supplies at stores allow those less-creative types access to this art. Here are a couple of investments and ideas for paring down:

Buy your own die-cutter and dies and cut them yourself instead of buying them, or cut pre-printed shapes from old greeting cards, or do both: use the die cutter on the greeting card. You could also die cut sticker sheets.
Buy your own cardstock and print your own scrapbooking pages. Here’s a couple of printers that print larger-than-standard widths: Epson Stylus Photo 1400 and HP Photosmart Pro B8350
Paint your own papers for different effects: Bubble Painting and Marbling
Bring back the art of Scrapping with scrap paper from other projects and tissue and wrapping paper from gifts.
Other serious scrapbookers’ ideas on the web can be found at ScrapJazz

Though the memory is the treasure, the scrapbook is its velvet-lined box. The art of a scrapbooker is not the art of the Louvre but just as timeless. You don’t have to limit yourself to what scrapbooking products they have in the stores, for the true art of scrapbooking is the art of what can be done with the imagination. It’s a bonus that the imagination costs less, too.

Image courtesy of lars hammar