Written by Jordan Fyfe

Who would have known that it would be so hard to find eco-friendly art supplies? In my mind, art and sustainability go together. I imagine being a full-time artist, living in Freo, only shopping at the zero store and saving the planet. However, I know that’s not the reality. This journey brought me back to when we first founded Open Hands and we just wanted a workshop business that happened to use sustainable products. However, while I spent days searching for sustainable products, we realised there was a huge gap, that’s when we decided to make sustainability our focus. So just like then, we’ve searched far and wide to find sustainable products that resonate with us. Where we couldn’t find them, we made them or had them custom made by local makers. Here’s a little diary of my journey.

Moth watercolour painting. Photo by: Open Hands Creative

Watercolours + bottle caps

This was probably the simplest step; we already use the Natural Earth Pigments in our papermaking workshop and knew they could be turned into watercolours. Morgan surprised me on my birthday this year with these two amazing boxes she made and an enthusiasm that said, “it’s time to start that watercolour workshop we’ve been dreaming about”. She used some beautiful shells she had which is just so #aesthetic but not sustainable so we decided on these bottlecaps which were kindly donated by a friend of a friend. Making your own watercolour paints from raw pigments is no easy task, the recipe takes research, testing, and tweaking. We have found a recipe that works for us and for this workshop, but we are still experimenting and finalizing the paints to be able to sell them to you on our ETSY!

Box for watercolours

The box was a bit of a contention for us. We originally thought a little perfectly sized tin but then there just weren’t any sustainable sources we could find (that we didn’t have to order minimum 5k of them). Then we thought we could laser cut them from bamboo and I designed a whole laser cut box. Then by chance our carpenter was dropping off some frames for our Pressed Flower Framing workshop and mentioned that he was trying to get rid of 100 boxes he made for a client who changed their mind at the last minute. Guess what? They were beautiful and the perfect size. So, although they aren’t made of recycled wood like we were planning, they are something that would’ve gone to waste otherwise so we’re pretty happy.

Paint brushes

This frustrated me the most. In looking for eco-friendly brushes I found a blog post that basically said, “there are none available anywhere, your only option is to grab a stick from the ground and use your own hair as bristles”, very disheartening. But finally, I came across these beauties from Craftamo. Made from cruelty free bristles, recycled brass, and sustainably sourced bamboo handles. The dream. They are far from perfect; we have to ship* them in from UK and their entire brand isn’t eco but it’s a start.

Mixing palette

These lovely ceramic palettes are custom made by a local pottery artist and our good friend Vanessa from 3 Hearts Ceramics. Ceramic is a much better option than the plastic palettes we see around and will last longer than a wooden palette. Plus, aren’t they just #aesthetic.

Paper

I got many samples, tried a bunch of eco papers to see which one’s worked the best for watercolours. It was also looking a bit hopeless and thought we may have to order from overseas*. We wanted something local and eventually we happened across these 100% recycled cotton paper from local paper and printery Peterkin.

Books, bugs and bits.

We got the extra things the same way we always do which is on our local buy nothing group or op-shops. We wanted references for our bugs, but new taxidermy bugs aren’t super ethical, so we went to second-hand bookstores and posted on our local buy nothing and got lots of books plus a few very special second-hand taxidermy bug displays. We also needed some jars for water and some cloths (cut up old bed sheets) for wiping which we got the same way.

Well, what a journey, I’m so excited to share this amazing workshop with you all and hope that we can see more sustainable products arising in the future.

*The thing about ordering from overseas is that although maybe the product we buy from a local distributer is made overseas, they buy it in huge bulk. If we are to order direct from overseas, we can only buy a small amount which means that the packaging + shipping emissions + people power is much larger. We’d love to get to a point where we can be local distributors of amazing products but we’re just a little baby business right now.

Check out Jordan’s Instagram: @jordanalice___