Monthly Archives: April 2017

Handmade Gifts to Delight Mom! (Order by May 5th)

New Products, Shop, ,

Mother’s Day is May 14th!

I’ve got a variety of gift ideas for your creative mom in my shop! 

And if you’re a mom yourself, feel free to share this post with your family so they get the “hint” 😉

OK, here goes!

1. Mother’s Day Cards

First and foremost, sending your mom a Mother’s Day card is the easiest way to make her smile 🙂

Blue Lilac Mother’s Day card is perfect if you want something different than the usual pink and purple cards.

Hen & Chicks Mother’s Day card is so adorable! Is your mom a gardener? Or a chicken aficionado? It has the message “Happy Mother’s Day!” inside.

Pink Bouquet Mother’s Day card – there is nothing wrong with loving flowers! This warm watercolor flowers will make her feel loved ❤

2. Blank Kraft Journals

These small (5″x7″) kraft notebooks are great for recording your thoughts and feelings, keeping your garden logs, or jotting down ideas for an exciting project!

They’re available as singles or a set of 3 – you know, in case you want to keep one for yourself 🙂


Blue Succulent Notebook is available here.

You can order your Green Leaf Notebook here.

Watercolor Circle Flowers Notebook is available here.

3. Hand Printed Canvas Totes

Does your mom frequent the local farmer’s market? Or always lugging lots of books and knitting projects wherever she goes?

My hand printed canvas totes are sturdy and you can fit a lot in there!

I designed and carved this artichoke design and hand printed them myself! It’s color fast and machine washable (though there will be some shrinkage.)

I have a very limited supply of these and not sure if I’ll be making any more, so order NOW if you want it! You can also see totes with lemon design here.

4. Art Prints

I’ve handpicked a few art prints your mom might enjoy 🙂

Rooster Friends art print is such a crowd pleaser! In fact, one of my customers ended up buying 2 of these because her mom saw it and really loved it, too 🙂

Be Gentle with Yourself ❤ Frankly, I think all of us can use this reminder sometimes. But I know moms especially could use a gentle push to take care of themselves 🙂

Does your mom encourage you (and her grandkids) to eat more vegetables? This Eat a Rainbow art print will make her kitchen brighter and gives everyone a fun reminder to eat more veggies 🙂

What do you think?

If your mom loves colorful handmade art, she’ll be delighted to receive your gifts from Honeyberry Studios ❤

And, if you live in the U.S., be sure to place your order before Friday, May 5th to ensure timely delivery before Mother’s Day.

Have a lovely day, friend!

xo

Yuko Miki Honeyberry Studios Headshot

p.s. Missed the link to my shop? You can go here 🙂

On being a beginner

creative process, My Thoughts, Pottery, ,

I’ve been taking a pottery class at a local community college since January.

And, I LOVE it.

Growing up in Japan, I’ve always loved pottery and wanted to learn. My husband gave me the class for Christmas last year, and it’s turned out to be one of the best gifts yet!

Black poppy tiny dishes

First of all, I appreciate having a creative outlet that’s not related to my business.

When I’m playing with the clay in the pottery studio on Tuesdays, I’m there to enjoy myself and create whatever I feel like creating. It doesn’t matter if it looks wonky. I don’t have to wonder if it’s going to sell.

For a few hours, I can focus on the joy of simply creating for the sake of creating, which sadly, gets buried under a pile of business tasks in my day-to-day.

Tiny bowls. I use the ones with line drawings for nuts, chips, dips, etc.

When I’m making my pottery pieces, I feel like a total beginner. 

When I’m hand-building a cup, 95% of the time it flairs out and becomes a bowl. 2 out of 3 mugs I made has cracks where I attached the side to the bottom piece.

My tall cups are definitely not round when you look at them from the top, and it’s not level when you look at them from the side. None of my pieces are even in thickness.

More wonky bowls and cups!

I see the beautiful pieces my instructor and more seasoned students (some of the students have been in the class for 15+ years!!) make and get so inspired.

Some of them make stunning wheel-thrown bowls and cups while others make complicated and unique sculpture pieces. They’d come to the studio with a big bag stuffed with their own tools, brushes, and bottles of special glazes etc. (All I bring to the class is my brushes to paint underglazes on :D)

Throughout the quarter, we do a critique every time our pieces come out of the kiln.

Although I love all of my pieces, including the flaws and wonkiness, I feel a little embarrassed to see my pieces on the table among more sophisticated pieces other students had made. 

Being a beginner allows me to be humble and reminds me to be patient. It reminds me that only way to get better is to make less-than-great work many, many, many times.

Poster by Nikki Hampson

You may have seen this Ira Glass quote about imperfection. It’s a classic and such a good reminder for any creatives learning something new!

Being a beginner also allows me to be less precious with my work.

I don’t know what I’m doing, so I’m less afraid to make a mistake (or don’t know if I’m making a mistake…:D) It’s like I have a permission to be more experimental and playful, which I tend to forget when I’m doing my “work” work.

And, when I make something for myself purely for the joy of it, it often resonates well with my audience, too.

Cats & dog bowls. Underglazed and fired once.

This is another lesson for me – Sometimes I think too much about what other people may want from me when I create my illustration work, and I’m no longer listening to my intuition about what I want to create.

I have to remind myself that people can tell when I create something from the place of joy and delight, and that’s what speaks to them the most.

I’m continuing to take the class this quarter and can’t wait to make more wonky pottery pieces!

Fellow artists and makers – do you have a creative hobby that’s not related to your regular work? 

Tell me in the comment! 🙂

xo Yuko

Yuko Miki Honeyberry Studios Headshot

My Favorite Tools: Sakura Koi Watercolor Field Sketch Box

30-minute daily painting, Tools

You probably know I’ve been painting 30 minutes every day since November.

(You can see my daily paintings on Instagram!)

My favorite painting tool to use is this Sakura Koi Watercolor Field Sketch Box. You’ve probably seen it in many of my drawing tutorials 🙂

It comes in several pre-set colors (between 12 and 48), and the colors are so fun and vibrant!

I use the 24-color set, by the way.

Since I’ve been painting with the blues a lot lately, my blues are almost gone!

Exhibit A

But since I have the exact colors in the Sakura Koi watercolor paint tubes, I could just refill the slots and keep working with the same set.

pretty blues ❤

Needless to say, this Field Sketch Box is super handy to take with you when you’re out and about, but I use it even when I’m painting at home.

With this box set, your set-up is so easy. You just open up the box, and you’re ready to paint.

I usually paint on my crowded desk or a small dining table and don’t have a lot of room to spread out, so its compact size is ideal.

I also mix Sakura Koi watercolor with other watercolor or gouache (an opaque watercolor) paints.

Here is an example of a painting where I used watercolor and gouache.

I just squeeze a little bit of a paint on the palette and use it as is or create different hues by mixing them up with the existing colors.

The set comes with a refillable water brush.

(By the way, don’t throw away the black plug that’s attached to the barrel handle – that’s what keeps the water vessel filled while transporting it in the box. You can still transport the brush filled with the water with the brush tip and the cap on, but it won’t fit in the box. Just FYI! I totally threw it away when I first opened my box and deeply regret it :D)

When I paint at home, I typically use regular watercolor brushes with a jar of water, but the water brush is convenient when you’re traveling and don’t have access to water.

It’s got small sponges on both sides of the paint cakes to clean your brush with. I just use paper towel to clean my brushes, though. Just a habit, I guess.

My palette tends to get messy – I’m ok with that unless I need a clean surface to blend my paints on.

Embrace the mess!

I just take a wet paper towel (or you can spray some water with a spray bottle) and wipe the area clean. That’s it! So easy.

If you’re looking for a fun and economical way to play with watercolor painting, you should give it a try! You can locate a store near you here 🙂

xo Yuko

Yuko Miki Honeyberry Studios Headshot

Greetings from Ithaca!

Mini Sabbaticlas, ,

I take every 7th week off to recharge and rest.

(a.k.a. Small Scale Sabbaticals – a brilliant concept I adopted from Seanwes)

I was on my mini sabbatical during the last week of March, and my husband, Dave, our friend, Ed, and I visited the EcoVillage at Ithaca (EVI) in Ithaca, NY!

Beautiful community! © Ecovillage at Ithaca

We arrived at the village a little before 9pm, and it was already dark. I didn’t get to see the village itself but the stars were amazing! Ed is from Argentina, and he was telling us how it still freaks him out to see the constellations upside down! 😀

I made my daily art on the flight from Seattle to O’Hara. I ❤ llamas!

Elan, our kind innkeeper at Frog’s Way B&B, met us at the dark parking lot and led us in to the cozy basement apartment we stayed at. I was so exhausted from the long travel (we’d left our home in Seattle at 4:30 am), I went to bed and fell asleep immediately.

The next morning, we had our breakfast – guys had homemade granola and yogurt with a cup of coffee while I had a couple of pieces of gluten-free toast with chunky peanut butter and sliced bananas and an apple with a cup of Bengal Spice tea. Mmmmm…

Cozy frog enjoying his cup of tea. Painting inspired by the B&B we stayed at called “Frog’s Way”

Their kitchen was at the north side of the house and only has a tiny window (it’s designed this way to maximize the insulation in the house), but the view from our bedroom on the south side was pretty awesome.

Looking over the community gardens.

Yes, the landscape was still pretty grey and bare, but we looked out the window and saw grassy field, gardens, and trees. Definitely different than our normal view from the apartment of pavement, town homes and cars… 😀

Temperatures were in the mid-30s, and though it was not “cold cold”, it was damp and felt a lot colder to me. I hate being cold so immediately followed the wisdom of my Wisconsin-bred husband and put on a pair of long underwear.

I really loved the combination of wood and earthen walls of these houses ❤
One of the ponds in the village. So serene.
A little sauna shack. I bet it’s amazing in the cold winter!

Our purpose of being there was to learn from the founders – how they got started, lessons learned and successes of building a thriving ecovillage.

Our first meeting was with Liz, the co-founder, and we met in one of their common houses (at EVI, they have 3 distinctive neighborhoods – Song, Frog, and Tree – and though residents live in their own private homes, they get to use the common house for shared meals, meetings, and other gatherings.)

Frog common house. So bright and inviting!

This common house in the Frog neighborhood was by far my favorite! It felt so open and airy. Even on a grey, drizzly day, there was so much light in the building.

And, of course, I loved all the artwork there 🙂

Beautiful mosaic work on the wall.
Succulents in pretty painted pots!

I was drawn to their handmade gourd lampshades immediately!

Homegrown organic gourd lampshades by Graham Ottoson.
And the boys were drawn to it as well…, like moths to the flame… 😀

They also have a workshop/studio/shop Graham’s husband built, called “Gourdlandia”, in the village, and I was thrilled to take a peek at other beautiful creations ❤

My dream studio ❤
Magical gourds… ❤
Love the delicate lights shining through ❤

And, of course, I had to paint one of the gourd lampshades for my daily painting project 🙂

Gourd Lampshade!

During our stay, our friend, Devon, who used to be an intern at Bullock’s Permaculture Homestead, where Dave lived for 7 years, and his lovely partner, Star, invited us over for dinner at their home in Ithaca.

I ❤ tacos!

They had an awesome build-your-own taco bar with all the goodies. Oh, it was amazing!! And it was so nice to see an old friend and meet new ones, too 🙂

On the last day on our way to the airport, we stopped at one of the falls in Ithaca.

Because all the snow was melting, the fall was pretty impressive! I could feel the mist on my face from 50 yards away!

Beautiful camo colors and textures on a sycamore tree ❤

We were there for only 3 days, and it was disorienting to wake up in my bed the next morning.

With all the technological advancement, you can travel so far away so fast now. When I got up on Sunday and walked out of my bedroom and looked out the living room window, I wasn’t sure if we were really in Ithaca the day before.

But I look at these pictures and paintings and know we were really there!

I’m so grateful to have been able to spend a few days in such a beautiful place and meet the kind people at the EcoVillage!

xo Yuko

Yuko Miki Honeyberry Studios Headshot