PAPER ARTIST ESSENTIALS - Supplies and tools

Hello, so today it is the first of a video series called my paper artist essentials and today I'm going to share with you the favorite supplies and tools I like to use to create characters, carriages, houses, castles or even doll houses. And the castle doll house that you see behind me is a workshop that is still open for a few days. Enrollments are going to close on March 31st and you have the link just under this video if you would like to join. This is at learnthemagicoffpaper.com and this is not going to reopen before spring 2027. So if you are interested in creating a big doll house with removable towers, big staircases, the entire matching furniture inside and of course all the towers, you have the link just under this video if you would like to join. So now let's go in the studio. Tools and supplies are the artist's closest assistants. They collaborate with them to make the work easier and more enjoyable. I don't believe a lot of tools and fancy supplies are necessary to create magic with paper. I'm a paper artist and I'm very minimalist when it comes to supplies and tools. My tools are not shiny, new, bright, like the owner actually. They are rarely replaced because they still work. Some have been my companions for more than two decades. Tools and supplies have a sort of intelligence and genius of their own. So for paper I use mainly two different sorts of paper. Since I've started to create with paper I didn't change, I never changed. I'm not the sort of person who likes to change anyway. Once I find something which works, which I can do everything with, I'm not interested in exploring and investigating. If I have something which I like and it works, I can still do a lot of very different things and continue to find new ways to work with it. This paper is mainly used to do any craft or to wrap and to ship things but it also can be used to draw. I love drawing on it, I love painting patterns on it, I like to use it to dress big characters, big things but also to mix it with the other paper I use which is mulberry paper. It gives some texture, it's a very robust paper. I like it for many reasons and a big roll like that I will use it for probably one year. Now there are less newspapers available, I don't use newspapers anymore but I will use this paper instead if I need something. I would use just like formerly newspapers because newspapers become pretty rare these days of digital information and the digital world we live in. The other paper I use is mulberry paper, it can also be called straw silk paper and it can come in a lot of different qualities, varieties. Of course, has a lot of things in life, the cheap one is the worst one. I did a lot of experiments with cheap ones, you can still do things with it but it's just bad. How do you know it's a cheap one? The price is low, it's very easy and the more expensive one is usually the better one. It has more fibers actually, there are more material in it and it's very easy to see because this one is the good one, you're going to see a lot a lot of fibers. It doesn't make a lot of noise. The other has very few fibers and it makes a lot of noise. Now sometimes for some reason I need to buy the cheap one because this one will sometimes take longer to arrive in my kingdom and this one I can have it in the big website where you can order everything but there are a lot of cheap and bad quality things too on it so I bought it on this one. I much prefer this one which is white, this one is even ivory. And for anyone who is joining my online workshops even the dollhouse workshop or any other of my workshops, you have before each workshop a very detailed video with all the description of all the things we are using, the reference and the links where you can order things. So all this is included in any of my workshops. This paper is very important, I use it for everything, to sculpt, to dress my characters, really for everything. The mulberry paper is the main paper I use. It's a great paper though it has no structure like the craft paper. It's very very soft. I like to complement it with craft paper because this one is very soft and I've used it for two decades, more than two decades and I found it really by accident. It's a paper which is also a lot used in craft. It's an Asian paper of course but yes it's one of my favorite papers. And as newspaper is very rare these days, I replace it with shipping paper and I like to keep it very preciously. Every time I receive a package, a parcel, I keep the shipping paper aside and I reuse it the same way I would use with newspaper. Because yes, newspaper, we used to have here a lot of free newspaper in the streets that we could take, we didn't have to buy it even. But it's not the case anymore so now I would instead use some shipping paper. For my scissors, I like to have a lot of scissors. Most of them come from a brocanteur I used to know and he had a lot of technical scissors which were used for different jobs, electrical work or any work which is absolutely not related to paper. So they're all a bit different, different weight. Most of them are pretty old. I don't even know the first use of most of them but my favorite one is this one. It's a very small one, very sharp. He has a measurement even on here. I think it is for something electrically related but it's a very nice scissors to have which works perfectly well and I don't like to have plastic scissors, modern scissors. So I like to find old scissors if I can find them in brocante. So yes, when I go on flea market, brocante, on charity shops sometimes. For the colors, I only use acrylic color, acrylic paint. I have some watercolor and a bit of pastel over there but really I only use them extremely occasionally. I like efficiency when I create. For me, the tools are there to help you go fast in what you want to create so I don't like to think and with acrylic, I never have to think. I've used it for so many so many years. I only like to have very basic colors because I like to create my own colors and every time I bought other already made color like green, purple or all of that, I end up never using them. I don't like very bright tone by the way so this is also one of the reasons I like subtle nuanced colors and tones now. I had moments in my life where I used really bright color for a few years but it was a long time ago with time going and maybe age too. I don't like so bright things. I like a little more nuanced tone so with those, I can create all the colors I want. Sometimes, I have some bronze and metallic color I can use for specific things but for 99% of the things I do, I only use this one which works perfectly well so I have the two colors I mix together to create all the colors I need and then white and black. I never use light blue, light green, light purple. Who knows? I don't use any of these colors because they already have white inside and with the way I like to work with the paper especially on craft paper but even on the mulberry paper with the layering technique I like to use, it doesn't give a nice result at all. I don't like it so it's the reason. I don't like to have tons of things I will never use which just take dust. In that case, I prefer having beautiful books, beautiful art, beautiful old antiques around me than having supplies I'm not going to use. And for the glue, I use only one single glue. It is wood glue. I used to have some wallpaper paste but wood glue is the glue I find the most reliable so it's not all-purpose glue or anything like that. It's really the glue for wood which comes in translucent way. It can also come in brown way. We don't have that in France actually. It comes in two different sources, the one which dries fast, the one which dries normally and I only use the one which dries normally. They are a bit different. There are different chemical products inside and they have impact on the way the glue dries so I prefer using the slow one. It's really the only glue I like to use because I only work with paper and cardboard and I have a lot of thickness to glue sometimes. There are a lot of paper or cardboard, sometimes wet, sometimes dry and the wood glue glues everything and she's super super reliable. It's the reason I only use this one. One of the supplies I almost never use anymore is the wallpaper paste that you use with newspaper. This technique I've used it for big projects, big things and I really stopped using this past year I would say since probably about eight years ago because the main reason is I don't like to have wet hands. I used to have wet hands for almost two decades really, at least 15 years. When the weather is cold in winter it's pretty unpleasant, you constantly have to dry your hands, they are always sticky all that. Well it got a little on my nerves after many many years and I stopped using it also because it takes a long time to dry in mid-season mainly when it's not very hot, not very cold enough so that you can have the radiator. In the different way I work actually, whether on my characters, on big projects, on dollhouses, I always work with different sculpting sessions and a lot of drying times are included in the way I work. So I work on something, I let it dry for sometimes many hours at least until it's completely dry and I go back working on it. Nothing is done in one session absolutely nothing so for everything even the sculpting only there are many many sessions and if I have to use this I will have to wait for two weeks before I can paint on it or I can do something which I used to do in the past but yes as I say in mid-season all that is just too complicated, too demanding to use and I prefer using wood glue as I explained because it's just more flexible, efficient for me, it dries very fast and I can continue to work and it includes all the drying times I want to without having to spend several weeks just to do the sculpting of anything so it's the reason I stopped using it. I have never used all the hot glues, glue guns and all these things I just don't use them and I don't use either the all-purpose glue either they don't work for all the things most of the things I do they wouldn't work they would be pretty disappointing they would have problems coming along the way so I just don't use them. I like to use also sculpting tools well you can use them for any sculpting any medium to sculpt anything but actually with paper it works well I used not to have anything any tool at all for years and years and years I was only using well a sort of pencil pen anything which was sharp and well it was working because I've done so many things with that but I have to say even if I like to be a minimalist they are really helpful and now I couldn't really work without them they make the work just more enjoyable and more pleasant I need to clean them I like to clean them once in a while because the paper get glued to it but yes they are precious to have for more precision and yes just enjoying the very act of sculpting with appropriate tools so I love my pencils I always have a lot of pencils available and ready to use they are only very very very soft pencils which means they are 5b 6b 7b soft because that's the pencil I like to use the best they land in a smoother way on the paper and with all the different papers I use which are not only drawing paper they work much better I much prefer them and I use the big one because they're very inexpensive and because I use them very very soft I swallow a lot of them they don't stay for a very long time because when they're soft you of course you use them faster than the very hard ones but I don't like hard ones even HP I never use HP pencils it's always 5 6 or 7b I use some wire to complement the paper on the cardboard but really only when I don't have a choice I use actually a lot of paper and a lot of glue for a lot of things when you may think I use some wire actually it's only paper and glue but once in a while I need it and I use this one which is a basic one 1.1 millimeter and I use it to for example create the arms of a character not the hands for example it would never be for the fingers of a character or anything like that it's really for the big things like more the structure this is just my approach on my tools every artist has their own favorite tools their own favorite things I'm really a minimalist for supplies I'm not interested in experimenting really new things in this field for me the most important is what you do with that it's not how many supplies you have how many fancy tools you own my tools and supplies are really precious to me but as I say I'm not really excited to go even in a craft shop I've never liked these places most most of them I really don't like them I much prefer going to old bookshop the only shop I really like to go to is Sennelier in Paris because it has never changed and it's really old with pastels and everything is well presented as it used to be in the 19th century so this one I like it but the other ones not so much I hope it has inspired you and don't forget to subscribe if you don't want to miss all the nice videos coming there will be others in this series of my paper artist essentials and of course all the other videos which are also going to arrive thank you very much and I will see you soon