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Thursday, July 7, 2011

Something New!

New sign!
One of many new bottles of ink with our brand new logo designed by Jeremy!


Tonight we are launching our new company "Belly of Flea Inks and Paints"! We have been really busy this summer making ink and watercolor pans at home in preparation for our shop opening up! We have had so much fun doing this and we hope you will go and check it out! 


Our site: Information about the stuff we make and the materials we use.www.bellyofflea.tumblr.com

Etsy: Our lil' shoppe!
www.bellyofflea.etsy.com

Belly of Flea flickr: Pictures of our farm and pigment/ink/paint making in progress. (and the occasional cat picture...)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bellyofflea/



Here is the opening message from our etsy shop! 


Hello and welcome to Belly of Flea Inks & Paints, a historical artist ink and watercolor supplier, est. 2002. We are committed to producing sustainable and non-toxic professional grade artist water media. We use organically home grown pigments. We also use organic plant, insect, and genuine earthen and mineral pigments to help fill in the gaps of what we cannot grow in the Belly of Flea mini-farm. We are dedicated to making safe art supplies that have little impact on the earth. 

Marie Antoinette's favorite shade of reddish brown fabric was christened "Puce" the French word for flea. The name stuck and dyers soon offered hues called, "Belly of Flea", "Thigh of Flea", and "Blushing Flea". When we first started making inks, some of our very first colors were various browns including, oak gall, walnut, and pokeberry. The name seemed fitting. Belly of Flea is run by the husband and wife team, Jeremy Seth Taylor and Allyson Mellberg Taylor. We are working artists, gardeners, and teachers based in Charlottesville, Virginia. 


Red Ochre, Lemon Yellow Ochre, Maya Indigo Blue, & Green Earth Handmade Watercolor Halfpans!


Jeremy's Awesome Logo & Package Design in action!


Lots of halfpans!




Shiny brand new watercolor cake drying!




7 comments:

CassieMarie said...

They look amazing! I just put them on my birthday wishlist. :)

Kathryn Rachel said...

I hope it is okay I did a small mention of this in my recent post!
You really have inspired me to start experimenting with handmade inks/dyes. Keep up the amazing work. x

Allyson said...

Thanks guys! Kate, it is totally okay! Thank you for mentioning us! We super appreciate it!
xoxo
Allyson & Jeremy

helicopter6 said...

How super exciting for you! Such a brilliant project to be pursuing and I do love the design! ... and name!

Anonymous said...

Yay! This is just what I was planning to do once upon a time - don't know that I'll ever get around to it now. This takes a lot of energy and dedication, so awesome that you all have opened shop!

I'm curious about many things. Where is the Maya blue from, is it from Kremer? How are you grinding such amounts of paint - is it super labor-intensive, or have you developed a batch technique?

I will be placing an order for sure. Congratulations!

Beespeaker said...

I'm so glad I discovered your blog. Your paints look wonderful!


Madame Beespeaker
(aka Zucchini Mama)

Allyson said...

Thanks Everyone!
Sunsikell: The Maya Indigo is from Kremer. We will continue buying from Natural Pigments as they have a better rate on bulk pigments. We are using alot of elbow grease. We use a glass muller and make a small batch recipe, about a dozen per pigment. Luckily we are sticking with a limited water media selection. Etsy is great ...so we can just make smaller batches and refill the inventory as we go. We figured since we are making these supplies for ourselves we may as well share and make extras for people to purchase. It has been a really fun project!