Greetings, and welcome to Markers and Meows!

First off, if you hadn't guessed it already, I love markers, especially Copic markers. I also love cats. Who could have guessed?  My husband has been telling me for a while that I should start a blog to share all of my random ideas and projects, so here we are.  I will be featuring ideas for organization, coloring, art, and more, as well as product reviews and comparisons.

My name is Sarah, and I live in California with my husband, Steve, and two wonderful cats, Zoe and Dax.  In addition to artsy things, I also spend my free time playing video games, crafting, watching TV with my husband, and helping my husband self-publish tabletop RPG books.

Supervisor Zoe, queen of our home

Supervisor Dax, also known as the court jester

In December of 2014, just after Christmas, I found myself sick and bored, wanting to do something easy but comforting.  I happened to remember an amazing find from our local game store: the Dungeons and Dragons Rainy-day Activity Book.  I scanned a few pages to color, and I haven't stopped coloring since.

That day started a journey for me that I hadn't expected.  I had never really considered myself an artist, but I realized that I wanted to try.  Since then, I've started to teach myself how to sketch, paint, and color with every sort of art supply I can get my hands on.

I've always loved markers and colored pencils when I have colored, so I started out that December with a big box of Crayola colored pencils and Super Tips markers.  However, my hands, which sadly aren't as young as they used to be, didn't like the strain from the pencils when I worked to get the deep, burnished color that I prefer, and I really wasn't happy with how streaky the markers came out.  I started researching alternatives and discovered alcohol based markers.

My first set was a big multi-pack of Sharpies, and soon after that, I added in the biggest set of Bic Mark-its that I could find.  I loved how smooth I could get the color, and they were so bright and vivid.  The major downside to these alcohol based markers is that they are fugitive, meaning that the colors look great when first applied, but they can fade, yellow, or even damage the paper in the case of Sharpies.  Sharpies and Mark-its also lacked any good flesh-tones, so I picked up a six-pack of Copic Sketch markers to supplement my color palette.  I fell in love with them.  Copic ink does fade over time, such is the nature of alcohol based ink, but they don't damage the paper, and the colors scan well for easy archiving.  (I'll talk more about why I love Copics so much in a later post.)

I've also moved on from my Crayola pencils to Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils.  I have tried out several brands, and they are easily my favorite.  I'll be sharing reviews of all of the pencils I have in the future.

I have quite a few other coloring and art supplies that I love, but I think that's also best for another post (or twenty!).

I hope you enjoy reading my blog and maybe find some new things to try as well!