I have this addiction for colours, paper and ink or to be more precise about the latter: the process of printing. Each as a separate drug or a combination of them will give me my ultimate high. I can’t remember at what age this started but I do remember what it started: felt-tip pens and ‘vouwblaadjes’. At times my mum would take us to the toyshop after nagging her for hours, explaining that we ‘just wanted to have a look around’. My brothers would go for Playmobil or Lego toys, I’d always make a beeline for the craft and art supplies section.
I would be instantly mesmerized by the organised ranges of colours no matter what it was: beads neatly arranged by colour in their separate compartments, crayons or felt-tip pens sets sorted by the colours of the rainbow and 250 sheets packages of square and coloured paper called ‘vouwblaadjes’ used for the Dutch version of origami: paper folding art. I still know a thing or two about paper folding and whenever my mum would buy me a package of ‘vouwblaadjes’ I would try my best to keep it neat and in exactly the same order of colours.
Not just the folding paper, I also had to keep my felt-tip pens arranged by the colours of the rainbow. You see, all these craft and art supplies were treasures to me and of immense value. I wanted to enjoy this for as long as possible which meant you’d have to look after it and keep things tidy and neat. My parents always encouraged creativity over grades: both have amazing drawing skills and my mum has a degree in fashion design and sewing. School was important, just not as important as a natural skill set, the grades were good anyway.
This is how it all started. These days resulting in a large variety of beautiful designed labels: food, whisky and wine, intruiging [Moleskine] notebooks, Talens Acrylic paints, Daler Rowney brushes, Conté crayons, Derwent watercolour pencils, Derwent color pencils, Van Gogh soft and hard pastels, hand-made paper containing cotton fibers and embedded leaves and/or flowers, Joss paper, wrapping tissue paper, rice paper, blue airmail paper, Chinese ink and nib pens, Pilot fineliners, Staedtler markers, glitter pens and my good old fountain pen…
And what I just mentioned is probably not even half of the things I have neatly stored away in my cool chest of drawers flight case… There’s another collection of graphic design tools, like a Pantone Color guides set, cutting tools, drawing tools and lots and lots more. So you see… this is why I could not resist the urge to buy those two notebooks last Saturday, it’s in my genes…
Blame my parents *wink*
Aladdin’s cave: Paper
Aladdin’s cave: Pencils
Aladdin’s cave: Pastels
Aladdin’s cave: Vouwblaadjes
I used to draw so much as a kid… I drawed series about families, fairytales and at one point, my friend and I must have drawn hundreds of little people who we called “the creatures” – supposedly, we were taking care of a family of them, we were playing out their very complicated relationships and each of the characters needed to be drawn in a bazillion versions for them to be able to wear a lot of different outfits. Ah, where are those days…
Aww, I hope you still have your drawings
I like your ‘creatures’ story, children have the amazing ability to fantasise and come up with funny stuff and imaginary friends. Most adults tend to forget about these abilities which is a shame.
I really hope you kept those drawings, it would be so cool to see them again after so many years. My mum still has all mine and I haven’t seen them ever since I was a child, I’m eager to see them again one day soon!
Uh-oh… better keep that flight case locked up :-O
Some of those pastels and pencils might be too tempting to use for weathering model trains and structures
Nah… I know how to keep my hands off
Sometimes if I got a set of miniature tools for modeling or instrument repair I’d have a hard time using them at first if they came nicely packaged.
Oc course they wouldn’t be organized by color, but they all had their place—all in perfect order.
The art supplies I mentioned are not exactly the cheap kind, so no messing with those unless you’d ask me to teach you how to use certain techniques
Hmmm… sounds like I’m not the only one with a weird streak of having to organise in certain orders. New and neat seems so extremely appealing straight from the store, I wonder why one would like to keep it that way: to enjoy it for as long as possible? Or to keep that feeling of exciting ‘new and neat’ alive?
The big tease Zesty Girl
How could I ever touch treasures all nicely organized like that? Anyway, if I reached in there I might draw back a nub :-O
No, I’ll stick to my Nupastel earth-tones… heck, I bet you could show me how to use those properly.
Nothing weird going on. Nice things are only new once.
Use your fingers and your intuition
‘Nice things are only new once.’ yes so I’m trying to postpone the ‘once’ part of that probably 
Just analysing…
hmm… maybe it’s my turn to analyze
New once yes, often true but not exactly all I intended. Couldn’t find the right words. Perhaps new forever? Postponing is a definite for me though.
Cars are my worst for postponing (or a certain brass item). I want to keep them new forever. But what good are they if I don’t drive them?
Yet the sad part is, even when I do drive the heck out of them I do a good job of keeping them “new”. It’s others that spoil it for me. And now I live near one of the largest salt mines in the world, and they aren’t afraid to use it when the other white stuff falls.
So sometimes it’s futile to try to keep things new… but it doesn’t keep me from trying
You are describing my childhood, except even better than the art supply section of the toy store, I loved office supply shops and stationary!
Hi CanCan, thanks for your visit
I only started to appreciate office supply shops later in life when I setup a business and realised I needed some 
Stationary: yes I see why… I can never have enough of that hence my profession
Beautiful pictures! Full of colour
I love them.
I was addicted (still am LOL) to books 
I remember the thrill when I would go to my friends houses and I would be much more interested in their bookcases rather than their toys
So you had that addiction when you were a kid
*LOL* that’s too funny! Well to be honest I also had a book addiction, I would go to the library and take as many books as was allowed, finish them in two days, bring them back and get the next amount *grin* I don’t know what happened over the years but I kind of lost that, probably because of a lack of time or patience
I still love reading but somehow I just don’t manage to finish a book, bad huh? 
hehe….time to re-find.
Sorry, couldn’t resist a little tease