Full disclosure. This is a post for art-supplies lovers.
In early December, I saw a post by Samin Nosrat. This was the image that lured me so you can see why I absolutely had to investigate.
In her post, I discovered Case For Making, an art store in San Francisco specializing in handmade watercolours.
For the next few weeks, I visited the CFM online store, happily virtually shopping — filling my basket and then emptying it. Then starting again. (Such! Fun!)
A lovely someone gave me a CFM gift card for the holidays. But it wasn’t until the end of January that I could actually bring myself to make the purchase. Indecisiveness-Over-Paint-Colour be my name.
Case For Making makes their own special blends of colours. These are denoted by CFM written before the name of the colour. So CFM Lagoon is their own mix. Then there are the more traditional colours you might find other paint companies producing like French Vermillion.
Each half-pan of hand-poured paint comes individually wrapped.
Here’s a short unboxing time-lapse video. It actually took quite some time to get the wrappers off the pans so I’m glad I did a time-lapse.
I chose only CFM blends because I wanted to see what those colours might look like and how they might behave.
Ha! Listen to me! Like I know anything about watercolours. I really don’t. The last time I used watercolors, I was probably thirteen struggling to get a feel for the medium. In my hands, it was always unwieldy, and as we say in Guyana, ‘own way’. (Own way implies willful). But for the next few years, I want to challenge myself to learn to handle more media – watercolours and perhaps pastels, hence this purchase.
Watercolours are, to me, elegant and tranquil so that the names of some of these paints are so calming, makes me even happier. (Maybe not Flame Red, though 🙂
Tidepool, Lagoon, Nebula, Mermaid Pacific, Horizon.
So lovely!
If you’ve used these watercolours, please let me know what you think of them.
Copyright © 2026
Lisi-Tana.com
All Rights Reserved
Show your support for the arts by becoming a supporter of my blog.
un.deux..trois… blog is reader supported. Consider signing up to be notified when there is a new post, or become a monthly subscriber to show your support.
The colors offer such a spectral arc – I enjoyed the time lapse of opening each and accounting the special surprise of seeing the colors which followed the random repositioning without order to color or placement. the joy was in seeing not in sorting.. thanks for sharing.