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In Linnea's Craft Bag

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In Linnea's Craft Bag

Hi there! I am here to share some of my favorite items with you from my craft bag that I use quite often, and we sure come across quite a few items here at DIY Craft Club. So these are the top picks of my favorite craft items and my favorite tools in the kitchen that are closest to my heart. 

 

1. My Archer & Olive 160gsm Planner in black with florals

I absolutely love my Archer & Olive Planner. I was first drawn to the lovely designs and florals, which I learned the owner of Archer & Olive, Bonnie designs herself! We did an interview with Bonnie where she tells us about designing her planners and her ideas and inspiration right here

Two other reasons why I am totally into this Archer & Olive planner right now, are the fact that I can lay it flat on any page due to its binding. Also, the pages are 160gsm thick, which means it is made to have minimal to no ghosting and bleeding through to the next page. Awesome. I know this planner was designed for the creative person in mind.

If this planner sounds like one that could be in your craft bag as well and you want to know more about it, you can check out our whole unboxing and the tests we did on the pages of the planner here

2. Gold Leaf

I love gold leaf and gold foil, you can be so creative with it! You can find it on Amazon here. You can add gold foil and gold leaf to acrylic paintings for a little shiny, metallic touch, or modge podge it to items to create gold accents around the house. You can add gold leaf to picture frames, figurines, ornaments, book covers... It is so fun to work with!

3. Tombow Dual Brush Pens in Pastel

I have only recently been introduced to these, and instantly fell in love with them!!! Tombow dual brush pens are so great to decorate a planner with! You can control how much color you want to lay on the page, and they are pens but act more like a controlled paint brush. Tombows can be used for hand lettering or accenting hand lettering with soft, bright or muted colors. They are great for doodling, filling in ink drawings and cartoons, and can be great as watercolors as well! lay some color down, grab a paint brush with some color and watch as the ink takes on a watercolor personality! 

My favorite onTombow pens are the ones in the pastel pack, but here is a link to all the Tombow Dual Brush packs you can get. There is a Tombow Bright palette of dual brush pens, a Tombow Landscape palette, a Tombow Muted palette, a Tombow Portrait palette... There are tons to choose from. Start your collection of Tombow Dual Brush pens today!

4. Chalk Paint

I LOVE chalk paint and antiquing things. And I really enjoy working with these unexpected colors! Check prices on Amazon here.

Chalk paint can come in a variety of colors like teal for adding some personality to your antiquing (check out the color 'grotto' and 'cascade' ) or gorgeous yellows (like 'summer porch' in the pastel selection of the link). This is a trend that I hope never goes out of style!

 

5. Sakura Pigma Micron Black Ink Pens

I love to do pointillism art using only black ink, and these pens are fantastic. Sakura Pigma Microns are also great for outlining doodles or pictures you draw with your Tombows in your planner :) This set comes with many different tip sizes, which is why I really love it!

Here are my five favorites from the kitchen!

1. A Cavatelli Maker

My husband and I love making our food from scratch, and an all-time favorite of ours is homemade pasta. We make the noodles and the sauce, and it is a family job! Spaghetti, fettucini, angel hair... But the one thing we didn't start making until a few years ago, is homemade gnocchi!

I thought that it takes too much time to make each one by hand with a gnocchi board or a fork. But then we went to my best friends' parents house for dinner one night, they were serving homemade gnocchi! I asked her mom, how she makes hers. And she showed me her cavatelli maker!!

For homemade gnocchi, you make the dough (A little differently than pasta, as you include mashed potatoes) but then you cut into strips and it flies through a hand crank machine and you have days worth of gnocchi in no time! (Yes, they can be frozen!) (I will have to share my recipe and methods in a homemade pasta noodle blog one day I think!) Anyways, I bought a cavatelli maker the very next day after the dinner we had, and we have been using it ever since. I may have even gifted our Creative Director here at DIY Craft Club with one last Christmas! I'm basically obsessed. haha. 

2. KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer in Bird of Paradise

I have been using the KitchenAid mixer since I got one after University. And I LOVE this product. It is an everyday tool for me as I have every attachment you can imagine...lol. But ever since Pantone released their color of the year in 2019 (It is called 'Living Coral'), I have been in love with this color! (If you are not sure what Pantone is or why it matters, check out our blog post "How To Use Pantone For Your Arts And Craft Business")

So here is the KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer in the color Bird of Paradise. It is gorgeous, and I love the way it looks in a kitchen! I am really into accenting with pops of gorgeous color through the kitchen right now, and I am totally seeing this with gold accents throughout. Can you picture it???

3. A Kitchen Weigh Scale

When cooking from scratch, a lot of recipes give you weight options or measurements options. I used to always follow the measurements, like 1 cup of flour... But sometimes, the recipes would not come out as perfectly as I had hoped. So I tried extremely accurate measurements using a kitchen scale, and let me tell you, it is pretty hard to mess up a recipe following this! So I highly recommend everyone use a kitchen scale for perfecting recipes.

I love this kitchen scale. I first mentioned it in an article I wrote called '10 Gift Ideas for the Bread Maker', and I got so much positive feedback from the scale I suggested! Plus, it comes in super cute colors!! 

4. The Ooni Woodfire Pizza Oven

This is an all-time favorite of mine. Actually, this might be my number one. I have been using a portable Ooni pizza oven for years. It is stainless steel and cooks pizza's so quickly, evenly and perfectly. This tool... Is EVERYTHING. I've been lucky enough to have gone to Italy several times, and I can say that hands down, this Ooni Pizza Oven makes just about the same pizza as you can get in Rome. And that is saying a lot. Plus, it only takes about 60 seconds to cook!!! 

We would often have parties and gatherings with the dough ready to go, so anyone could come and put on whatever toppings on they would like, and we would serve on-demand Italian pizza with red wine (isn't that the best thing you've ever heard? sigh...). I also have a friend in Toronto who has a food truck and makes and sells these in the summer! He is actually the one who told me to purchase this beauty (thanks Matt!).

We also love to cook fish in this, specifically, maple-syrup salmon. it really crisps and carmelizes the top beautifully. I could write a whole blog post on this Ooni pizza oven.

5. A Food Processor

I never thought I needed a food processor until I actually used one. And I will never be without one again. A food processor is an item that is always on my countertop, I don't even put it away. Salads, soups, sauces, and dressings, chopping everything you can imagine, and if you get a good one, perfectly sliced food as well. 

Now quality definitely matters with this item, that is one thing I have learned. You see, I LOVE homemade hummus. I make it about three times a week, it's true (and healthy! If I don't have my homemade hummus I will eat chips... sooo anyways, long story short, I love carrots, cucumbers, and hummus!)

Well, I went to visit someone a few months ago and was telling them about it, so I asked if she had a food processor. "Yes"! Was the answer, so we bought all the ingredients, and the hummus turned out lumpy... No amount of pulsing could save it, and when your hummus is lumpy, it doesn't matter HOW great it tasted. It was the fault of her food processor. And the texture is King of this dish. 

I have done a ton of research over the past year to find the best food processor, and most places I looked and the reviews all said that the Cuisinart Custom 14 Food Processor can't be beat. So, this item definitely made my list for what is in my craft bag!!!

My Wishlist Item

To end my article, I am going to leave you my wishlist item. I have quite a few, but to narrow it down to one item...was difficult. So instead of an item, I am going to leave you with a wishlist project that I can't WAIT to do. 

A live edge, resin-filled table. 

I already love resin, and basically, everything that resin creates, so I have had my eye on trying this for a while. I know I will need the following items, so let's call these my wishlist items:

Live edge pieces of wood

Glasscast clear epoxy resin

A heat gun

There are more tools to buy for this one, so hopefully, I will have a post for you by the fall on how I made my own live edge resin table! 

I hope you enjoyed all of my favorite items I shared with you!! If you have any questions on any of these items, be sure to ask! And if there were any items you loved, be sure to pin this on your Pinterest page, we would appreciate it! 

Favorite crafting tools and kitchen gadgets 

 




2 Responses

Linnea @ DIY Craft Club says:
Linnea @ DIY Craft Club says:

February 06, 2019

I loove my Archer & Olive planner!!! And I just used that pizza oven again a few nights ago… I need to write an entire post on it… lol. It is such a great tool to have! And the pizza’s taste just like they do in Italy!

Cora
Cora

January 13, 2019

The Archer & Olive journal and Sakura pens look amazing! And that pizza oven – wow! They’re now added to my wishlist. That table looks intense; can’t wait to see a DIY video on it ;)

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