On the Move

We’re wrapping up the sale on on Turkey home, and after I’ve put our personal belongings in storage, I’m heading to Los Angeles for a year. Although Red is enthusiastic about joining the Monday-Friday work brigade again (he’s actually already there, and a Gang Boss on a Netflix movie), I have no intention of doing the 9-5 carousel, and have decided I want to make money off my creativity. I’m already writing and selling my travel guides and my non-fiction books, and I know I’ll continue to write more books, but I want to branch out and leverage my obsession with watercolours.

Dabbling with an Obsession

I’ve been dabbling in watercolours for years but was always a little afraid of them. I didn’t really understand how to use them. When I saw watercolour pictures I admired I tried emulating them — with bad results. What I failed to understand was that because watercolour is transparent, you have a lot of flexibility when it comes to applying multiple layers of the same or different colours.

With the Covid restrictions I’ve had a little more time on my hands and have spent the past couple of months diving head first into experimentation with watercolours, and the fog of confusion has started to lift. To be honest. Now I’m a little bit obsessed with my watercolours and I’ve started keeping a monthly art journal — they’re not cheap, and this has given me an idea.

The kit above are the supplies I took with me when I came into Turkey and had to spend 10 days quarantining in Istanbul. I treated my imposed confinement as an art retreat, and ended up burning the candle into the wee-small hours to paint. Many nights didn’t go to bed until just before dawn. You’ll notice I have two watercolour art journals in my kit.

Thinking Caps on

I’ve always been a little reticent to share my art, but I threw caution to the wind at Christmas and painted cards for a select few, and in January I shared some on my International Bums series online (more about these in another post). I got some positive feedback, and I’ve already received a couple of commissions from friends. This got me believing I am able to create and get paid for it.

Although I can paint and try and sell art, I think another viable option is to create handmade watercolour art journals for fellow artists. I’ve been buying a few small watercolour books recently, and because they’re expensive I thought I’d explore how easy it would be to make my own. I’ve watched a few videos, and during the process I remembered that back in the ’80s I did a course in bookbinding and calligraphy, as a precursor to starting my own calligraphy business.

I left my job and hand-lettered invites, place settings, and certificates for private and corporate clients, but I didn’t do anything with my bookbinding skills. As soon as I watched the bookbinding videos, my classes came flooding back to me. I remembered how much I enjoyed the books I made, and wish I’d kept my end-of-term project which was a handmade book filled with my calligraphy samples. It must have got lost or tossed in one of my many moves.

Time to dust these bookbinding skills off and create books for me to use, and for fellow watercolour artists to buy.

Competitive Research

The obvious place to sell these handmade watercolour books in on Etsy, so I loaded up the app on my phone and did some competitive research. There’s a whole range of different books for sale — ranging in size and construction, so I started off by looking through the listings.

Customer Comments

As an author, I know that a key part of competitive research is to see what reader like and don’t like about a book, so that you know what you need to provide or focus on. So my first stop was to read the Etsy comments to see what customers liked about the books they ordered:

• Well Made. Good Quality. Lays Flat. Nicely Packaged. Perfect Gift.

Besides these comments, one major one that jumped out was about the paper quality. One of the best sellers got a critique about the quality of the paper they used (not good enough quality). As an artist, paper quality is important, and this commenter was requesting 100% cotton/140lb paper – preferably Arches.

Materials

Each book is made slightly differently, but here’s a summary of the variety of elements for the most popular books.

• Watercolour Paper. 140lb. 270gsm. 100% Cotton Paper.
• Book Board or Acid Free Chipboard
• Waxed Binders Thread or Beeswax Embroidery Floss

Some book binders offered Options.

Colour of binding thread: This seems like a little OTT to begin with, so I don’t think this is something I want to explore. It’s really only a viable option if I intended to keep a supply of pre-bound books in every colour available. At the end of the day, I’m not sure that this would be a key buying decider when choosing one book over another.

Book Size: I love painting on postcard size (4″x6″), and buy preprinted blank postcard books. A book of 15 is about $6. You paint on one side, and there’s printing on the back for the address, and space to write your message. I did some calculations for creating books based on this size.

If I’m making painting surfaces of 4×6, then I could get 4 pieces out of a 12×16 piece of paper (to create Landscape pages), and 9 pieces out of a 18×24 piece of paper (to create Portrait pages.

Page Quantity: This is definitely an option. I like the idea of offering 14 and 34 sides to paint on. So the art journal could be large enough for a two week trip or a month-long art journal.

Custom Covers: This is also a good option, but would mean that I’d have to have a webpage that displayed the available paper or fabric cover options. And leave myself enough time to construct the books prior to shipping.

Competitive Advantage

Paper Quality

It seems like many of the book binders aren’t watercolour artists because they don’t state what watercolour paper, or the paper they’re using is not good quality. So a good option would be to use a good quality paper. It doesn’t have to be the best, because these are travel art journals, not pieces of art to be sold. So the quality of paper needs to be high enough to allow multiple layers of page and water, and to allow lifting off without the paper disintegrating.

Travel Niche

Because I’m already entrenched in the travel niche (with my travel books and this travel blog) it makes sense to just extend my interest to include these handmade books, and aim them at travellers who want small portable books to take on their trips and vacations.I plan on branding these related to travel and cover them with travel-themed papers or prints. I can either offer them pre-made, or offer that as customisation.

Target Audience

• Bloggers or Travellers who dabble in watercolours
• Watercolour artists who travel
• Urban Sketchers who watercolour locally

Art Quotes

It doesn’t look like anyone is offering customisation to add a motivating quote. So this would be a good option to add to each book I ship out. Either stuck into the book, or added as a separate card. Not sure if I’d add as an option – or just a nice surprise when then open the book.

I’m excited about this new venture. I just wish I hadn’t packed and stored my sewing kit and my art materials. I’m sure I have everything I need to make a couple of sample books to refresh my bookbinding technique.