The Color Box {A Story + A Surprise}

| Allison

GUYS. I AM SO EXCITED! I finally, FINALLY started an Etsy shop for my art, after working on it for quite a while! 😀 AHHH YAYAYAYAY!

Ahem. Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about it and why I’m so excited for it. Click on the picture or the link below it to visit my shop.

the color box header

The Color Box Studio

Story Behind the Shop // My Mission:

I’ve loved art my whole life and I’ve always dreamed of selling my art and crafts as a business. It was (and still is) my dream job. That’s why I’m so overjoyed to actually be doing it! I believe God gave me what talent I have to use it for his glory as well as to bring myself and others joy. 😀 I hope to build a collection of fun, beautiful prints that will brighten people’s homes and add unique, handmade pieces to their décor that you can’t buy just anywhere.

Behind the Name

After much deliberation, I named my shop The Color Box Studio because I love colors and have a box of 72 Prismacolor colored pencils that is among my most treasured art supplies. 😀 Plus I just think it’s a cute name. XD

What I Sell

Currently I’m just selling art prints, but I hope to add some original and custom pieces soon. (If you have a custom request, just let me know and I’ll be happy to work with you!)

I have four prints available so far and I can’t wait to add more soon! Here’s a peek at two of the listings, and you can see the rest here.

Click on the pictures to visit the listing.

Red Fox Art 2

Zentangle Elephant Art 2

What is Gicleé?

The type of prints I sell are called gicleé (pronounced jhee-CLAY). Gicleé uses a certain process and materials to create super high-quality prints with bright colors and fine detail. I decided on it after some research and trial-and-error, because it’s basically the best-quality art print you can get and looks almost exactly like the original. Each piece of art is printed on thick, white, archival-quality paper to ensure it will last a looong time – a minimum of 80 years! I use this printing company and I absolutely adore their products and customer service.

So yeah! That’s my announcement! 😀

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Also, since I realize the news is probably not as thrilling to you as it is to me (and this post would be way too short otherwise XD), I wrote a little story for you guys at Mercury‘s suggestion. 🙂 I hope you enjoy!

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The Color Box

The air was heavy that day, laying on her shoulders and sitting on her head like a great flock of birds. It was November, bleak and colorless, and Kira was wandering the streets as usual. Her long, gray-brown hair hung limp and forlorn in the miserable weather and she walked slowly, so she could notice everything.

Kira was an Observer. She collected things with her mind. She had a whole room in her brain filled with the small wonders she had seen: mist rolling in mysterious clouds along the street; a striped snail sliding over a little white mushroom; three cats following an old woman with an enormous straw hat…  She never took the things she saw; she just looked, and remembered.

Her favorite part about Observing was the colors. Her city had precious little color to brighten its weary streets, so whenever she found a yellow flower springing from a sidewalk crack or a bright bluebird flashing by, she smiled her soft, slow smile and closed her eyes to be extra sure she would remember it.

Today, a piece of color caught her eye and her heart leapt. It was a color box. She saw it flashing in the sunlight, peeking out from under a heap of dry leaves and crumpled papers, and she hurried toward it.

When she opened it, she breathed a shuddering breath of delight. She had never seen so many colors at once. All the colors of the rainbow, and even more besides! The pencils were lined up in an uneven row, some blunt and some sharp, some tall and some short, and they were all beautiful.

Kira looked at it thoughtfully, and made a decision. For once, Kira collected with her hands as well as her mind. She would use it to draw the best memories in her collection so she could never forget them.

She began at once, smoothing out a crumpled piece of newspaper nearby to draw on. At first she tried a flower, one of her favorite finds. Kira chose a periwinkle blue for the petals and a bright green for the stem and leaves. Her pencil scratched and scraped on the paper. Her eyebrows drew together in concentration and she caught her bottom lip between her teeth to keep it from trembling with excitement. Finally Kira sat up and looked at it.

Her face fell. The colors were beautiful, but the flower did not look like the picture in her head. Kira was discouraged, but then she set her mouth firmly and promised herself that she would make a better one.

All day Kira worked. She drew flowers, she drew snails, she drew her fingertips with their broken nails. A little beetle crawled onto her paper and she drew it too. Twice a pencil got too worn down and she had to take a break to sharpen it with the dull sharpener inside the box. Finally, as the sun was setting, Kira drew the same periwinkle flower one more time. She smiled slowly in satisfaction. It still did not look like a perfect match, but it was much better than her first try.

She could hardly wait to try again tomorrow.

The next day she decided to try and draw the face of the old man who always sat on the weathered bench beside the curb. To her dismay, faces were much, much harder to draw than flowers. But as before, she took a breath, selected a new crumpled piece of paper, and started again. She stared at him for minutes at a time, taking in each wrinkle, each hair, the color of his eyes and skin and lips. And then she drew.

Day after day, she tried again. Sometimes she drew faces of passersby or people who looked out of the windows, but most of all she drew the old man who always stared ahead at nothing, rubbing a thumb over the a brown mark on the thin, wrinkled skin of his hand.

Finally, one day she was satisfied. She looked from her drawing to the old man’s face and grinned. Shyly, she stood up pushed the paper into his lap.

“I drew this for you,” she said quietly. The man blinked and looked down slowly. He stared at the drawing for a long time, and then looked up at the girl. He smiled.

The next day there was an old woman beside the man on the bench. When he saw Kira he beckoned her toward him and said, “Can you draw her too?” Kira could.

Thereafter Kira drew a new person every day. After a while she got tired of drawing with the same colors, so she chose different ones. Kira drew people not in the colors she saw with her eyes, but in the colors she saw inside of them – the colors they really were.

Her solemn gray-brown eyes looked at you unflinchingly, looked and looked until you felt she was pulling your secrets, good and bad, from your eyes, and you dropped your gaze. Kira found the secrets one by one and from those she could tell the color of the person. Some people were bright yellow and orange and pastel pink, and others were blue and gray and purple. One man was only black and white.

Every day Kira drew, on newspaper and scraps of cardboard and paper bags. When she was finished, she hung them on lampposts all over the city, so the people she had drawn could find them. Slowly the city grew more colorful. When people saw the drawings they would stop for a second look, and walk on with their inside colors shining more clearly on their faces. And Kira herself was no longer composed of grays and browns but of all the colors of her pencils, for they had bled into her fingers and crept into her heart, so that they were a part of her.

Nowadays Kira still collects things – the room in her mind is heaped to overflowing – but her favorite memory was and always will be, her color box.

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Hee hee, that was a fun little story. 🙂 I hope you liked it and my Etsy shop. What is your favorite listing I have so far? And what is your favorite “color box” – colored pencils, watercolors, markers, etc.?

Thanks for reading, my dears, and have a most wonderful day!

***Allison***

97 thoughts on “The Color Box {A Story + A Surprise}”

  1. That’s awesome! I really love you business name and the story. Im starting my own business and I thought about selling on what once but didn’t want to pay for the space without knowing if I’d sell… what’s it like though? 😊

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    3. Thank you so much! Ooh, I hope your business is a success! Yeah, that’s definitely something to consider. Thankfully Etsy has a very low start-up cost – only twenty cents a listing, I think, and then they take a small percentage (like 4%) of your profit when you sell something. I love Etsy! It’s pretty great. 🙂

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  3. *gasp* that is SO AWESOOME!! ❤ ❤ I love it! Now I remember when you showed me the color palettes!! I would LOVE to buy, but I think my mom would probably say that I could just make it myself, which of course, I couldn't.

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  4. Wow girl I am honored to know you…I feel like we are soul sisters I always thought of it as I’m lost in my own world. Ever sine I can remember I get lost in a daze and think…I paint my curiosity and it feels good to be among friends! I send good vibes for you shop. Do you know about the online help they have..webinars and do you know about society6.com

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      1. yes forums are good too but you shop is awesome and the story should be part of your about page…maybe a fraction of it and a pic of the girl….thank you

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  14. Wow, great job Allison! Will you still be keeping up your other etsy shop? I love the elephant and the fox. So cute! I love the name too!

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    1. Thank you so much, Hannah! Well I’m planning to keep it up all this year, but if I don’t get any business until then, I’ll probably close it so I can focus on this one more. 😉
      Thanks so much! I love them too. 🙂

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  15. I loved the prints in your shop- absolutely gorgeous! The rooster was so exquisitely detailed, I’m still in awe! 😀 The story was really creative, I liked it very much. 🙂
    I was wondering if you could do me a little favour. I myself have wanted to start selling on Etsy and got halfway through the process this week, but I’m stuck with some things. Your post told me that you sell too, so there! I’m glad I have someone to enquire to.
    I hope you don’t mind if I send you an email to clear out some things?

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  16. Yay! You got your Etsy shop up! I’m so happy for you, and I hope it all goes really well. I like your logo–it fits your Etsy shop. Also, that was a fun story you wrote. 🙂
    As you know, I basically only use pencils for my drawings, but recently I’ve had to use black illustration markers for school assignments, and they’re really fun to use!
    By the way, I’m really sorry I haven’t replied to your email yet. I meant to over the weekend, but obviously I didn’t. Hopefully I’ll write it soon, though!
    ~Sassafras

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    1. I DID! 😀 Aww, thank you so much! I’m glad you like it and the story!
      Ooh, that sounds really fun! There’s something really nice about the smoothness of ink lines. 🙂
      Oh no problem! It’s totally fine. 😉 I look forward to reading it when I get it, though!

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  17. Your Etsy shop is amazing! I love the fox, it’s so cute! My favorite color box is my ink pens. I love drawing with ink : ) I liked the story too, it was full of colors and imagination!

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  18. I figured out about this from Pinterest before you posted about it, (XD) BUT IT’S STILL SO EXCITING AHH! I LOVE all the art prints and the story!! My mom said she wants the fox for our living room wall. XD

    -Clara ❤

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  21. Ahh so excited for you, Allison! God is good! I’m hoping to start a shop on either Etsy or Society 6. Congrats! ❤

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  25. GIRL! That’s so great! SO EXCITING! What are you waiting for? GET MORE STUFF ON THERE! I absolutely LOVE that name too! it’s SO cute! 😀 🙂 PERFECT for you! I always just draw with black and white/pencil. 😉 It’s awesome that you are so good at both! I’m so glad that you are getting to pursue your dream job! Keep up the great work, Allison! God gave you a wonderful gift! 🙂

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    1. THANK YOU THANK YOUUUU! Ha ha, well I’m working on it! I want to add some originals since the gicleé prints take a looong time to make the first time and they’re also pretty expensive to buy too. :/ But I’m working on a new piece!
      THANK YOU AGAIN! I love it too! Hee hee! Aww, you are so sweet, dear. ♥ Thank you for the comment!

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  27. I love your shop already, nice products and overall design. Wish you all the best! Please report how is going on, I am very interested since I recently opened my own shop (ioKikkaDesign) but so far not much is happening.

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  30. WOW!!! Allison those are so pretty!! 😀 I am so glad you started an art Etsy shop. I bet a lot of people will want them. 🙂

    -Laura

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  31. OH MY GOSH THAT SHORT STORY WAS AMAZING! 😀 😀 😀 I wish I could write short stories like that! 🙂
    I’m better at writing long books with a drawn out plot and lots of detail. I don’t know how to be concise without being sloppy or ending it too abruptly. :/

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  32. I am so excited for your new shop and am very pleased to feature it in my magazine! My favorite piece you have so far is definitely the zentangle elephant, it’s AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL! Though, the others are wonderful too!

    Your story was AMAZING!!! Eek, I LOVED it so much! 😮 😀 You are so creative and imaginative!

    My favorite art medium is… I don’t know… I love the bold color or markers! 😀

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    1. Thank you sooo much! Yes, I really like that too, especially because it took so long to draw. XD
      THANK YOU! I’m super glad you liked it, Livy!
      Ooh, I agree. Marker colors are so satisfyingly bright. 🙂

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  33. Very cute. I definitely liked the elephant best, I’m also just an elephant nut. I’m about to start an Etsy shop too. It’s very excited and nerve wracking at the same time! Hope your experience goes well.

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