Why you need a portable printer

Let me start this off by stating the obvious. No one ‘needs’ a portable printer. A portable printer is a luxury, it’s a frivolity. It’s a purchase that says, ‘sure, I could wait a reasonable amount of time to fulfil my printing needs. But I don’t *want* to!’ It is a tiny little shrine to self-indulgence, and if you can’t afford one, or if the idea of affording one makes you start weighing up more essential purchases, then please scroll on.

But. If you are a dedicated memory keeper. If you like to keep holiday diaries. If you are a journaller. If you are a stationery addict, or someone who loves really TINY THINGS. Or just materialistic and acquisitive. Then I am here to tell you that you might, actually, really need one of these babies.

Everything you need fits into this handy little case, which comes with it. I keep a few spare packs of refill paper, the charging cable, and the Sprocket itself, all zipped up inside and then I am ready to GO. You can download the Sprocket app, connect to your phone via bluetooth, and Bob’s your uncle.

I sometimes find the Bluetooth connection a bit glitchy, but that’s quickly resolved by disconnecting and reconnecting. I also do find it needs plugging into a power source in order to print, and I’m not quite sure if that’s by design, or maybe a bug as my sprocket is a couple of years old now. Either way, it’s not a problem.

By some special brand of technology magic, this little printer doesn’t require ink, but the paper .. has ink inside it? … is activated by the print? Look. All I know is, no refilling ink. Which means the little packets of ‘zink’ paper aren’t cheap, but at just over a tenner for 20 sheets they’re not too bad. And you’re not exactly going to be printing out 20 page documents, this really is a novelty item for special pictures.

The picture above shows a photo, fresh from the printer. You can see that the colour is a little intensified, the quality of the image isn’t absolutely brilliant, but given how small the printer is and how tiny the photo comes out, I think it’s pretty impressive.

By far the best thing about this printer is that each photo it prints out is a little sticker. You just peel off the back and you can stick it straight into your diary, onto a birthday card, or wherever you like. The main, perhaps the only, place that I use mine though, is in my holiday diaries.

Video shows flick through of holiday diary, showing sprocket print outs featured

I have blogged about my holiday diaries before, here, and you can follow me on instagram or Pinterest to see more of them. I find these little printed out photos are the absolutely ideal addition to a holiday diary page. Not only do they add a bit of colour and interest, they fill up a little bit more space quickly which makes the whole task a little bit less daunting. I do love photos anyway, and I love making photo books (or, perhaps better to rephase that - I love HAVING made photo books, and I love admiring the line of finished spines sitting together. Actually putting the damn things together is a bit of a pain). I fear it’s becoming more and more common to just not have physical photos at all, just endless virtual albums of thousands of pictures we never look at. So I do my best to make yearly photo books, to print out ‘polaroid’ style prints with lalalabs that I stick to my basement door, to hand out school photos to relatives, and to print out little sticker pictures for my holiday diaries. It makes me feel happy.

Time lapse of reloading zink paper into sprocket

The video above is a bit of a hilarious fail - I tried to do a time lapse but in fact the process of replacing the paper is so quick that the time lapse itself is unreasonably short. But you get the idea. You literally open up the packet, click off the back of the printer and drop it in. The back is held on with magnets meaning there is no forcing open, or worrying whether something is about to snap. It clicks open, and then snaps smartly shut again.

And there you have it. I would not say that a portable mini photo printer is one of life’s essentials. But I would also say, and I do not feel this to be contradictory, that I really love owning mine, it’s a vital part of my holiday diary kit, and I wouldn’t be without it.

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Essential sketchbooking kit

I always love reading about other people’s art supplies. This may be because reading about other people’s art supplies, then making my own lists of art supplies I would like, then scrolling around online to find out where they are sold / read reviews is rather easier to do than actually sitting down and just Doing Some Art. But that might be a topic for another day.

I do love looking at the weirdly enormous ‘hauls’ of art materials that some people buy and handily post on youtube. But the art supplies that I really love to learn about are the seasoned regulars. The ones you reach for so regularly that you couldn’t live without them. The ones you have two, or three, unopened back ups of just in case you ever run out so you don’t have to be without one for even a single second.

So I thought I’d write a blog post about what I throw into my pencil case before I go out sketching, now that I have finally managed to make sketching on the go, and outside, a (relatively) regular thing.
Above is my pencil case of choice. For ages I did not have a pencil case, in fact I am slightly entertained to relate that I had forgotten that pencil cases even existed! I had a few pens swilling around loose in my hand bag, and was feeling frustrated about it, remarking that they were getting lost, and the lids were coming off, and what I needed was, '“a small bag to put them in …. oh.” This happened to be the next pencil case I saw, so I am not claiming any superiority for it. It holds the implements. It’s reasonably capacious without being huge in size. What more could we want.

First into the case: the old faithfuls. In this case, a pencil, and two fineliner pens. I only carry one pencil, and to be honest I don’t often sketch with pencil now, which is strange because it used to be the ONLY thing I would ever draw with. But I still carry one, mainly for sketching out rough outlines and guidelines early on.

The fineliner pens are Winsor & Newton, and I use these ones because they are water proof, meaning I can watercolour over them after they are dry, without my piece deteriorating into a grey splodgy mess. I always carry a 0.8 for my general drawing, inky and wide and forgiving, and a 0.3 for finer detail. (And I do indeed possess, at any time, at least four or five of each, and the idea of running out makes me start to sweat and want to stock up on a few more.)

I can have a perfectly good time sketching with just these three implements (plus a rubber / eraser), but if I am throwing more in, then next come the category I shall term the ‘wild card’ pens. This is a small selection of coloured pens that I might use to colour in or to draw with. I prefer bright, bold colours for this: turquoise, teal, hot pink, or purple. Here I have one of my Tombow double-tipped pens (brush pen at one end, felt tip at the other), a Pentel brush sign pen in pink, and a disposeable fountain pen with turquoise ink.

I really like the disposeable fountain pens, but I am not sure I will replace them when they run dry, as they do seem needlessly wasteful and unsustainable. The Pentel pen is lovely for calligraphy and also lovely for drawing as the nib is firm but flexible so you can get some variation in line width. And a good Tombow is just never a bad thing.

I very often bring an Ecoline with me, and although I have flirted with the grey blue, and the maroon, in the end I come back to this stalwart, the grey. I love to sketch in fineliner pen and then use the juicy Ecoline to create some shadows and depth. The pen is so inky it almost feels splashy to use, which encourages me to loosen up a bit (this does not come naturally to me, either in drawing or temperament) which makes it a great addition.

And finally, I have only very recently started to get more confident with painting watercolours when out and about, which I tend to do with a little travel set of paints and a water brush. I also pack a piece of kitchen roll that I can wipe the water brush off with, and then I’m away. Truthfully I still feel self conscious painting in public, and not confident enough about my results to do it very often, but I have gained some confidence from painting in backgrounds, which feels like a good start and a way of warming up a little.

So that’s my sketchbook kit. Sometimes I bring all of the above, sometimes just some. Sometimes I get all over excited and stuff masses more in, and then don’t use any of it apart from one pen. But these are my regulars. And I’d love to know - what are yours?

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Get organised in 2023

Is one of your new year’s resolutions to be more organised? To be a better, more thoughtful friend? Well, I’m not saying that sending a hand written card is the best or only way of doing those things. But I am saying that sending a hand written card certainly wouldn’t go amiss. I mean, you’re never going to be sorry that you wished someone a happy birthday, or sent a card to tell them you missed them, or to thank them for their Christmas present. Particularly now so many people are working from home, you might find you suddenly need a card, and you want to send it today, and the choice at the corner shop isn’t quite what you had in mind…

The good news is that I am here to help you. Of course you can get my cards one by one, as you need them, and I’ll happily post them off to you in separate orders. But wouldn’t it be better to have a small stack of them, and keep them in a drawer so that when you want to send a card, you have one right there where you need it? My multi-pack could be just what you need.

It includes:

• 2 x ‘happy birthday’ cards (the workhorse of my card collection, and easily the best seller. Brightly coloured and beautiful enough for your best friend but not so outlandish you couldn’t send it to your grandma. The little black dress of your card drawer.)

• 1 ‘just to say’

• 1 ‘congratulations’

• 1 ‘thank you so much’

• 1 ‘hello you’

• 1 postcard which reads ‘thankyou! What a star you are’

In a world where even our text message inboxes are increasingly full of promotions, ‘do not reply’ messages and requests for feedback on the call you just made, a hand written card delivered through the post might be more appreciated and more important than ever. This multi-pack of 6 cards and one postcard will see you ready for a whole variety of different occasions. ‘Just to say’ and ‘hello you’ could literally be used for any message, whereas ‘congratulations’ can be used to send your good wishes on an engagement, marriage, exam results, driving test, new baby, degree, or any other achievement.

And by buying 6 cards together you’re saving money too. Normally the cards would sell for £3.50 each, so the 6 cards would be £21.00 but if you buy this pack you only pay £15 and you get a free postcard.

My rainbow calligraphy multi-pack of cards is available on my Etsy shop here. You can also buy my rainbow lettering cards individually, along with matching wrapping paper and a whole host of other goodies.

I am currently adding to my cards range, with some additional Valentine’s day cards, and a ‘happy anniversary card’. If there is another occasion or phrase that I don’t currently offer but that you would like, do get in touch! You can email me on hello@racheltripp.co.uk, or find me on instagram @rectripp and leave a comment there. I can also do commissions where I hand paint a phrase or name of your choice - email me and we can discuss.

My holiday diaries in Simple Things magazine

I am ashamed to admit that when I got the email from Simple Things magazine, I initially thought that it must be spam. I very nearly - VERY NEARLY - ignored it or deleted it. Even the ‘Dear Rachel’ that I could see in the preview wasn’t enough, as so many of the marketing emails I receive these days address me warmly by name.

So when I opened the email and saw that it was from Simple Things, they were running a feature about holiday journalling, and that they wanted to feature some of my art, I read it with mixed feelings of surprise, delight, and a sense of fear that I could easily have inadvertantly ignored them, entirely by mistake.

Do you know The Simple Things magazine? I’m actually a subscriber (another reason to think that the email was a marketing one). Their tagline is ‘taking time to live well’ and I always think that their pages are like the perfect, maybe perhaps a little idealised, antidote to urban life. This magazine has articles about things like mindfulness, growing plants, and dreamy photoshoots where impossibly beautiful friends all wearing linen sit in orchards having picnics, spreading homemade jam onto homemade bread and laughing together.

I would say it falls more into ‘aspirational’ than realistic. And frankly, there is no harm in that .Sometimes a bit of aspirational content is just what I want. During lockdown I gobbled up their content each month, and the pages took me far far away from the daily drudgery of cooking and home school, even if only for a moment or two.

In July, the magazine theme was ‘Drift’, and one of their articles … was about keeping a holiday journal. Hence their approach to me.

Naturally I stayed very cool and professional, and certainly didn’t reply immediately agreeing to be featured, with hundreds of exclamation marks, if that’s what you were thinking. I assumed that nothing was certain until it was actually in print, so whilst I did share the news with a few friends, I generally kept it under my hat until July, when the edition was in my hand, and I frantically flicked through looking to see if I was there or not.

I was! And it may not be cool to confess it, but I was genuinely so thrilled and pleased to see my work in print. I was featured alongside Jennie Maizels, whose holiday diary workshop I attended years ago, and which kick-started what has now become a whole stack of illustrated diaries that sit on my shelf in the most pleasing way you could imagine. I was very glad that they featured Jennie too, partly because I learnt about holiday diaries from her, so it seemed wrong to pretend I’d done it all myself. Also I was so flattered to be featured alongside her, as she has long been something of an illustration hero of mine.

If you like the look of these, do follow me on instagram, where you can find all my holiday diaries under the hashtag #rachelsholidaydiary. I’m hoping to film a few holiday diary flick-throughs too, and will be keeping another holiday diary this half term when we go away to North Norfolk, one of my very most favourite places in the whole world.

Super granulating watercolours

I have for some time now been a big fan of Natasha Newton’s artwork, and also of her dreamily soothing YouTube videos where she tries out enormous quantities of art materials. I am a sucker for this kind of stuff anyway, so generally want to purchase almost everything she tries, but the thing that really intrigued me was the (quite hard to say, and spell) Schmincke Horadam super granulating watercolours.

Since I was buying some more paints anyway, I threw a few into my online basket, and ordered the following colours: Tundra pink, Tundra Violet and Forest Blue. When they arrived I was struck by how small, and unassuming they looked. But appearances can be deceptive!

When I started to try painting with them, I was absolutely stunned by how they … well, ‘granulated’, I suppose. I wasn’t necessarily familiar with that expression, but then I started to see what looked like a plain colour settle and pool into the texture of the paper, with the separate pigments in them separating, bringing out blues and browns, or pinks and purples, both I’m the same colour. And once I had seen that, I was ob-sessed.

Video of swatches of granulated watercolours, showing the separated colours and texture.

I went back once they had dried and tried drawing some of the seed heads from my parents’ garden that I sketched last summer. I keep coming back to the shapes of these. I might do a Lino print based on these, what do you think?

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You can buy these really amazing watercolours from Jackson’s Art supplies.

You can find Natasha Newton’s beautiful landscapes and more on her Instagram here, and her YouTube videos are here.

Rachel x

Send a sympathy card

Just send a card. I know you worry about what to say, and is it too late now to send a card, and how about just after the funeral, and supposing you start to write, ‘Dear X…’ and then you’ve got nothing, and do you even have an address anywhere that isn’t in an address book that is more than 15 years old? Just send a card.

It was really important to me when I expanded my range of greetings cards to include a sympathy card. It might seem a bit morbid but I am a passionate believer in sending people cards, but I am a particular believer in sending cards when someone has died. Fundamentally, nothing makes anything any better when someone dies, but sending a card at least shows you care, and it’s a way of reaching out that requires no response or any kind of emotional energy from the recipient.

So for what it’s worth, here is my guide to doing it. Firstly, although it might give you the heeby jeebies, keep a sympathy card in the house. There is something particularly panic-inducing about looking at a tiny range of faded cards in your local corner shop, one of which you absolutely must buy, and all of which seem to have been printed in the mid 80s and have embossed roses and / or terrible quotations on them. (If this is literally all you can find, I’d still say sending something is better than nothing! But ideally, keep a card at home somewhere.)

Then, if you get the sad news that someone you love has been bereaved, just take the card out and write in it. Do it quickly, and pop it straight in the post. Straight away. Don’t wait until you can think of the perfect thing to say: there’s no perfect thing to say. Don’t put it off, otherwise you will never do it and will feel bad.

That said, there are a few things to avoid saying, unless you are extremely certain that the person receiving the card wants to hear them. Don’t say ‘everything happens for a reason’. Don’t say ‘they’re in a better place’ or talk about religion or heaven unless you know this is something that the recipient believes and will be comforted by. Don’t say what a wonderfully angelic person the deceased is if you know that the card recipient had a difficult relationship with them.

Just say that you’re so sorry. Say you’ll be in touch and say when, and say it’s ok if they’re not ready to be in contact. Let them know that you are thinking of them, and their family if appropriate.

If you also cared about or knew the person who died, you can let them know how sad you are too (but if the person you’re sending the card too was closer to the deceased, then remember the ‘circles of grief’ analogy where you give support inwards, and seek support outwards). If you didn’t know the deceased very well, but have a happy memory of them and it feels right, you can briefly share that. Just write, ‘I have no idea what to say but I had to send you a note’. Just say, ‘I love you’.

Just send the card.

The best white pen

Fellow stationery and pen obsessives, fellow sketchbookers, this one is for you. I went out and found the best white pen, testing out tonnes in my quest, doing experiments on different papers so that you don’t have to.

The best white pen

If you’re reading this blog I am going to assume a certain level of pen interest. If you don’t have quite the collection that I have (yet) I am going to assume you’re at least pen curious.

So you’ll know how vital a good white pen is to all kinds of creative undertakings: drawing on dark paper, adding highlights to a drawing, bullet journaling, and more. A white pen (or, ahem, many, MANY white pens) is basically an essential

Above are just a few of the pens I have tried. I know. Now, accepted wisdom seems to agree that the Gelly Roll white gel pen is the best one. I have to say I disagree, even though I realise this is mildly heretical to some people, and outright treason to others. I find the Gelly Roll pen a bit… well, a bit ‘meh’. Like, it’s OKAY. it’ll DO, I suppose. But call me a hopeless romantic; I want to feel more passionate about my white pens than that.

Some of these beauties above absolutely have their place. The Tipp Ex pen is surprisingly useful for, eg, writing names on pencil tins and calculators for secondary school. The oil-based paint pen writes on some surfaces that other inks will just slide about on.

The acryolgraph pen is one of the very best pens in the whole entire world, but ye gods those pens are EXPENSIVE, and only available in sets of 10 different colours, and I did hear tell they were being withdrawn from sale in the UK altogether, so that’s hardly useful is it.

So here is the best white pen I can find. The pen so good I bought about 10 of them so I would never be without them. I like them in ‘broad’ because I like a slightly thicker line.

You can get them from Cult Pens here: Uni-ball signo broad white gel pen

Their white ink is opaque and flows well. It’s visible and bright on even black paper, and the pens are just over a couple of quid each. What’s not to love?

Ps: if you’d like more stuff like this: sketchbooks, pens, bullet journalling, plus info about my cards, prints and any workshops, make sure you sign up to my newsletter here: Sign up