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So this week I finished my paper watch for Templar Books’ ‘paper watch project’. I was debating on what sort of theme to go with for a while as I wanted to do something colorful and something in which I could use oil pastel – therefore I couldn’t do anything extremely detailed on such a small surface, or so I thought.

In the end I decided to go with an autumn theme, including a lot of leaves, part of a tree and squirrels, a favourite animal of mine and something I thought had the potential of being colourful.

I was kindly emailed a template for the watch earlier so was able to plan out what I was going to do and how I was going to do it on there. My original plan was to use oil pastel for the squirrels and leaves and watercolour pencils for the tree and patterns in the bark. However, watercolour pencils weren’t showing up on the watch’s material at all so I had to use watercolour paint.

Overall I was happy with the design of the watch but I think the one thing I would change would be the size and amount of leaves, making them bigger and having less leaves. Where I had a lot of different coloured leaves close together the colours merged into each other a little. Considering I was using bulky awkward oil pastels I suppose this isn’t much of an issue, I could have had much worse problems!

I debated a lot on the colour intensity of the bark and whether to make it a darker, more saturated brown or not. In the end I decided this was best as a darker more vibrant shade may contrast with and show off the colours of the squirrels more. I tried to keep the design fairly simple and overall probably used about 5 different colours in the whole watch so not to overcrowd it in such a small area. I originally visualised many squirrels all over the watch and realised that this wasn’t going to be possible, especially if I was going to use the oil pastels!

To conclude, I hope that the paper watch project does well as it is for a great cause, and I really enjoyed being a part of it! I would have never thought of the idea and it’s an exciting and interesting way to raise money.

Read more about The Paper Watch Project & Templar Books here: