Organizing my Art Supplies with Notion

🎨(Not a sponsored post), I just really love Notion. Template included!

My personal collection of Caran d’Ache colored pencils.

As a reader of a stationery¹ newsletter, you will likely relate to the following scenario: You’re at the art store, you get a little excited, and you forget about everything you already have at home. Pencils, paints, pastels, and markers in their attractive arrangements are hard to resist! I’m prettyyyy sure I don’t have this color, I’ll just grab one or two as a little treat. Then, as soon as you get home and unpack your art supply haul, the post-Blick-clarity™ will hit, and you realize you bought yet another colored pencil you already own. (True story, it happened to me.)

I cannot commit my collection of 88 colored pencils to memory, and I was tired of taking a gamble on buying a color I might already have when faced with a beautiful display of pencils (the other solution would be to stop impulse purchasing, but let’s be realistic²). I decided it was time to devise a system: a digital inventory of my supplies I could easily access on the go.

Author’s note: If this looks familiar, I have tackled this subject before in video form on TikTok, but this tutorial will benefit from a longform post + easy links to the Notion Template.

A real life picture of me buying a second colored pencil in a shade I already own (999-111, Mauve) because it looked different in the store (it was not).

As a PC/iphone user, Notion is my drug of choice for organizing my life. If you’re unfamiliar, think of it as an app/website that combines google docs/sheets/iphone notes all in one place, but….more³. I love managing everything from a desktop (input is way easier for me here), but having easy access on my phone as well, and google sheets was not cutting it. I needed to build a seamless, beautiful, and powerful digital art supply database.

Step 1: Swatchy swatchy.

Step 1: Taking Stock

I took inventory by dumping out my entire box of colored pencils, and swatching every pencil I had in my sketchbook. Almost all of my colored pencils are watercolor pencils⁴ (Caran D’ache⁵ baby), so I also applied water to half of each swatch. The watercolor shade can differ slightly from the dry shade, so it was important to me to see both! If I found any duplicate pencils, I noted the quantity on the swatch sheet.