Product of the Month - January 2021 - Pocket Palette

I use and love a wide variety of products with my job; from paintbrushes, watercolor paper, and pens to backpacks, computer equipment, and hiking boots. My work has me almost constantly searching for tools to make it easier, more efficient… or sometimes just more fun. I’m going to start featuring a different product each month and see if I can remember to keep it up for a while. Sometimes the products will be art supplies, sometimes not. We shall see.

These posts will often include affiliate links if the product is available on Amazon. Shopping through these links earns me a few cents and it’s very much appreciated.

On to the POTM!

This month’s favorite product is the Pocket Palette from Art Toolkit. Not available on Amazon, but it can be purchased through their website. This little palette is a smidge larger than a business card and holds a variety of different-sized paint pans. Different-sized pans can be purchased on their website to fully customize your palette. There’s even a smaller palette available.

**Edit: in the summer of 2021, they added the new Folio Palette, which is bigger than the pocket palette; about 5.5x3.25 inches. Trying to justify getting one.

The bottom of the palette is a magnet that keeps the pans in place and makes them easy to remove, wash, refill, and organize any way you’d like. The lid works as a little palette to mix colors too.

I got my first one a while back when I bought the Art Tool Kit for myself. I have absolutely fallen in love with it and you can read about it here. A few months back, I bought a second Pocket Palette so I could separate my warm and cool colors (read more about it here). They both fit in my Art Tool Kit and the size of these palettes makes them ideal for plein air painting (that’s French for painting outside).

I even use them at home when I’m just painting in my office. I’m pretty particular when it comes to how my colors are laid out and in what order, so I love being able to reorganize from time to time; especially when I add new paint colors to my palettes.

What’s a great product you’d recommend??

Wasatch Midwifery & Wellness

When I was pregnant with my second baby, I opted to see a midwife and have him at a freestanding birth center instead of a hospital. I was low-risk and it ended up being far and away a better experience than when I had my first baby in a hospital four years prior.

One of the midwives I saw on a regular basis was Adrienne Brown. She was warm, friendly, straightforward, and she made me feel completely at ease while at the same time, I felt completely confident that my baby and I were very well taken care of. She hails from the realm of “you know your body and your baby best, I’m just here to support you.” What more could a woman ask for, right??

A few years ago she opened her own freestanding birth center and practice and I was honored to be able to create rack cards for her birth center. She had a logo already and some beautiful photos, so I created a few layouts and this was the final result. It’s honestly an easy job when there are such beautiful photos!

Check out her site! Wasatch Midwifery + Wellness

I love how they turned out!

Hike it Baby Social Media & Magazine Ads

Aside from the activity sheets and watercolor stickers I’ve had the pleasure of creating for Hike it Baby, one thing I create for them on a regular basis are social media graphics and magazine ads. They work with a bunch of really amazing photographers and I get to turn some truly beautiful photos into social media graphics and, when it’s in the budget or they can get free ad space, magazine ads. Below are some of my favorites:

The graphics below were printed in a couple of magazines like Backpacker Magazine, Outside Magazine, and a couple of smaller publications.

This one is easily one of my favorites, and I think it was the first time we were able to get a full-page ad in Backpacker Magazine. What a beautiful photo!

These are so much fun to work on and it is very exciting to see one of these ads in print!

New Look!

I mentioned a while back that it usually takes me a long time to design a logo for myself. I think I went six years once with the same logo simply because I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I made a new logo in 2018, and I felt ready for something new again in 2020.

Here’s my new logo; nice and simple. I’m kind of loving it.

The past few years have brought a little bit of a shift in the focus of my work; focusing more on contract work with companies and branding. I have reorganized the artwork on my website to focus much less on event invitations and party stuff. I am still happy to create that stuff, but it’s no longer my main focus. It turns out that creating a logo for myself kind of goes hand in hand with figuring out what the focus of my work is. I have been tremendously lucky to get to contract with a couple of amazing companies in the last few years and I really love the work.

I printed my business cards with Overnight Prints and I love how they turned out.

In addition to this refocus, I have always had watercolor as a part of my life, so it was fitting for it to still be prominent in my logo. With the Covid-19 pandemic forcing us to cancel travel plans, I took to my painting to virtually escape to the places I had hoped to visit and I built a little branch of my business with it.

I started with creating a YouTube channel (with some serious encouragement from my oldest son) and I started posted timelapse videos of some of my paintings. From there I started having these paintings printed as stickers and, as of last week, they are now for sale. Click HERE to see what I have for sale. I am going to try and get two more paintings done before the end of the year and then I’ll end my Utah’s Public Lands Series and look at starting a different series; or I may just paint some of my favorite outdoor spaces. I already have a finished painting of Delicate Arch from Arches National Park, but I’m not sure if I want to do a series on National Parks. We’ll see.

One thing I do know, I want to eventually have high-quality prints available of these paintings. In January, it’s on my to-do list to research printing options and find out what it’ll take to have a limited number of prints made, maybe I’ll sign them, and what will be involved with shipping them to customers and make sure they make it there in good shape.

If anyone has recommendations on a printer, please share in the comments! Even better if they can print on paper that feels like watercolor paper.

Wild Utah Tours

Back in January, I created this watercolor painting of Babylon Arch for my friend Shanti and her Hiking My Way Retreats. She had it made into stickers and printed on her business cards and it’s a painting I’m still very proud of.

Cut to this summer, Shanti and her husband, Mark have gone full-force into building a tour business in southern Utah. Wild Utah Tours is your go-to for hiking and driving tours that promises to escape from the crowds. This pandemic has forced loads of people to flood our national parks; Zion National Park for sure. But Utah has a TON of amazing trails that aren’t inside Zion National Park. Shanti and Mark have scouted loads of amazing places to explore.

Hike to find millions-of-years-old petrified wood, shimmy through slot canyons, find petroglyphs and pictographs from Paiute or Ancestral Puebloan peoples, look for lesser-known sandstone arches and waterfalls, or run down sand dunes. They can create adventures for all ages and all abilities, half-days or full-days.

I had the pleasure of reworking the Babylon Arch artwork for them and we also created printed promotional materials to share around town. I’ve been told that postcards can be found at River Rock Roasting Company in La Verkin, UT where they have fantastic coffee and amazing pastries.

Two-sided postcards:

Two-sided rack cards. My son was looking for these at a hotel in St. George when we were there in October.

We created a two-sided postcard that fans could send to friends and family too.

Lastly, we created big car magnets for their vehicles. What a view, right?!

In addition to their tours, they also manage a handful of AirBnB properties in La Verkin, UT; which is a very central location to Zion National Park, Snow Canyon State Park, Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, Red Cliffs Desert Preserve, Sand Hollow State Park, and a ton of amazing recreation activities.

To add even more versatility to their offerings, they also have two trailers that you can rent! They’ll drop one of their trailers at one of a handful of local campsites or BLM land and you just show up to camp and explore!

Shanti and Mark are pros at showing off the beauty of southern Utah and doing their best to make it accessible to anyone who wants to visit. Please take a moment to check out their website and consider adding Utah to your list of travels. Even if you don’t consider yourself an outdoor adventurer, they will customize a trip for your abilities. Kids under 12 are free and they offer discounts for anyone who identifies as LGBTQ+ or BIPOC.