Welcome back to my series: ‘What’s in my pencil case’. You know how you can find out a lot about a person when you look through their bookshelves or DVD collection? Well, I love having a nose through someone’s pencil case, so last year I started a guest blogger series. This month I’m welcoming Claire from Sherbet Lane as my latest guest.
I work as an illustrator and have spent many years working in the children’s picture book industry. I work from my little studio at home in Essex where I live with my two sons and two cats. About four years ago, my love of (addiction to) stationery drove me to start up a fun little monthly club where I could create my own stationery and share it with my subscribers. What started as a small side project has grown beyond all my expectations and the SherbetBox Club now takes up a good part of my working week – lucky me!
I work in a complete and utter mess most of the time but my pencil case remains tidy and functional, as it is such an important home for many of the tools I work with. It’s a rather dull and simple grey one but the size and the way it opens up works just so perfectly for what I need.
Inside I have my set of writing and drawing pens, the Edding handwriters are a new discovery for me and I love to make notes with these, so easy to write with. The pigment pens are for illustrating, they can take getting wet without the ink running so are essential for when I am creating watercolour illustrations.
The pencils are my favourite ones to draw with, I think I may have kept Faber Castell in business due to the amount of 4B pencils I have bought from them over the years!
I LOVE to bullet journal, sometimes I think it’s the only thing keeping my life in some kind of order, and so I use a set of highlighters to colour code everything I am meant to be doing. My bullet journal isn’t particularly creative (I have complete bujo envy for those beautiful ones you see on Instagram) but I’m completely lost without it!
I always have a couple of washi tapes on the go to use in my bullet journal, a rubber, and a handy little ruler. The lighter is there not because I smoke but for lighting candles! I’m not sure why it started but it has become a ‘thing’ that I often like to have a candle burning when I’m illustrating… maybe it’s because I find that little glow so relaxing.
The little silver heart was slipped inside a birthday card my sister sent me and it now lives in my pencil case.
The badge on my pencil case is wooden and I designed it for one of the SherbetBoxes, it’s a good self reminder on those days when everything seems to be going wrong to keep my chin up!
Want to contribute to this series? Contact me via my About page.