Maker Gift Guide

Coloring Pages

December 21, 2016

Do you have an artist or maker in your life? You’d like to buy them a gift, but don’t really know what they’d like? Here’s a list of my tried and true suggestions. These are things I use day in and day out and I absolutely love them. I wouldn’t recommend them, otherwise.

Membership to an instructive Class/ Website:

My personal favorites are Skillshare and Creative Bug. You can use these sites to learn to do anything from knitting to card making, gift wrapping to illustration. The instructional videos are beautifully produced and packed with inspirational projects and insights. Both sites are adding new videos all the time so I doubt you’d ever run out of content to watch. They are very affordable, also. Click this link to get THREE MONTHS of Skillshare for only $1. Or you can Buy a 12-month gift subscription to Creativebug and get a $15 amazon gift card.

Supplies:

PAINT

Winsor and Newton Watercolors
I use these almost every single day. The colors are vibrant and mix beautifully. Winsor and Newton is a great, but not alarmingly expensive, brand for art supplies.

Winsor and Newton paintbrushes

Winsor and Newton Gouache is excellent as well.

For a less expensive set, I’ve been really happy with Prang Watercolors. I use them all the time when I teach kids’ art classes. The colors are beautiful!

SKETCHBOOKS AND JOURNALS

I use multiple sketchbooks and journals on a daily basis.

Moleskin has a large variety of sizes of watercolor sketchbooks that hold up very well to all wet media. I like that they do not have spiral binding, though I know many artists that prefer spiral bound sketchbooks.

Strathmore carries a lot of highly recommended sketchbooks as well.

I’ve had my eye on this Very Big Sketchbook because it just looks like a fun new size to explore.

Moleskin makes my favorite journals as well. I don’t mind the thin pages in the blank journal. I have used watercolor on the pages and they held up pretty well. The pages do crinkle a bit, but I actually really like that. I like having no lines to restrict my journaling. I do also use a lined version for my scripture journal and its’ pages are thicker, if that’s a concern for your artist.

COLORED PENCILS AND PENS

I have this Koi Brush pen set and it is perfect for my sketchbook, for coloring and for brush pen lettering. It has plenty of colors, but I dream of one day owning this giant set.

I love these Staedtler pens. They have a fine line and vibrant colors and I use them all the time in my journals.

I recently purchased these Staedtler Colored Pencils and they are dreamy. They are creamy and soft and blend beautifully.

Prismacolor is also a favorite brand for colored pencils. They have all sorts of sizes of kits available. Everything from 12 pencils to 150 pencils (swoon!).

MAKERS:

Project Life App

I’ve been documenting our family story through Project Life for years. I’ve tried all of the methods available: physical product (where you have actual paper and actual printed out photos and slip them into photo sleeves in an album) digital Project Life (on the computer), and the Project Life App. My personal favorite is the Project Life App. I can easily create stunning scrapbook pages in minutes without any mess or fuss. This allows me to keep up to date in small moments while waiting in the pick-up lane or nursing my baby or on the airplane on the way home from our adventures. I had the photos from our Alaska trip completely scrap booked before our airplane even landed.

At only 99 cents, this app is pretty incredible, and absolutely life-changing for busy Mamas who want to remember the extraordinary days they’re in the middle of, without having to spend a lot of time documenting.

VidAngel Gift Card

The perfect way to wind down after a busy day or to watch a movie while crafting away. (Or both, which is what I usually do).

If you’ve never heard of VidAngel, you’re missing out. We love this service! You can stream countless movies, both new and old, and filter the content to exclude things you are uncomfortable with. (You can even filter out Jar Jar Binks!) We love sitting down to enjoy our traditional weekly pizza and a movie night (something we’ve enjoyed together religiously as a family for the past decade) and not worrying about whether our kids will hear or see something inappropriate.

You set the very specific filters yourself. VidAngel will let you know if a scene is important to the plot line or not before you filter it.

KiwiCrate

Perfect for the young creative person in your life. We just signed my son up for a year subscription to Tinker Crate. He received his first kit this week and has loved it. It was a perfect project for a little one-on-one time with his Engineer Daddy. At one point the day after they put the kit together I heard Ethan playing around with it. He was off in his own little pretend world and I heard him say, “Copper tape emergency! Copper tape emergency! Alert!” Totally made my day.

What gift ideas would you add to this list?

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Heidi Hillman