Jane Davenport Butterfly Effect Books - Travelers Notebook Review

Jane Davenport and American Crafts partnered to create this beautiful collection of Jane Davenport Butterfly Effect Books (which are similar to travelers notebooks) in there different canvas style prints and one plain cover book.  If you have spent any time on my blog, then you know I love travelers notebooks because they are so versatile when I am on the move. 

I can insert a calendar and have my schedule available at a glance.  I usually have one with me that has watercolor inserts because I never know when I might be inspired to doodle or paint.  I like the fact that Jane Davenport offers such a delightful collection of covers in a man made material.  These books make great gifts for my vegan friends who are not fond of the leather ones that I have in my own collection.        

Anyway, the Jane Davenport Butterfly Effect travelers style notebook can hold a Midori Insert and most other standard inserts. However, Michael's does carry a varied assortment of these type of inserts to meet a variety of needs.  Jane Davenport and American Crafts also offer some inserts for these travelers notebooks.  They are the JDMM Marker Paper Inserts which are a smooth paper and perfect for using with markers.  They also have the JDMM Watercolor Paper Inserts which are very nice for watercolors and markers.  What I like about these insert papers is that they are not bound.  You just slip them through the elastic to hold them and then you can easily remove them later.   

Book Details:

Each book measures approximately 8 3/4" x 10"   opened flat.  Folded it measures 8.3/4" 

by 5" folded 

(I used a metal measuring tape so it might be a little different from a standard measuring stick). Each book has a plain fabric interior with no pockets.  If you are using it as an art journal it will get dirty.  

Each Book comes with one 12" elastic that is woven into the book to hold 2 or more inserts. The line also has available additional sets of elastic available for purchase.

By using some elastic to connect two books together and just utilize the elastic already in the book, I was able to stuff a lot into the book 

and still have it close well.

Elastic with Charm Set Details:
The Jane Davenport Butterfly Effects Notebook (or Travelers Notebook) line offers two different charm and elastic sets.  Each set comes with one charm and three colors of elastic.  The set above comes with the girl charm and a red, green and blue elastic.  The other set is a female genie charm that comes with a pink, purple and turquoise elastic.

Pocket Pages Details:

The Jane Davenport Butterfly Effects books do not have any inner or outer pockets.  However, Jane Davenport does offer a JD MM Butterfly Effect Book Pocket Kit which offers four different plastic pockets.  The plastic pocket folders are 8"x 8" opened flat and fold to 4" x 8".

The colors of the pocket folders are yellow, pink, blue, purple. Each folder has a different print that works well with the color of the plastic pocket folder.  

These folders are perfect for holding the refill insert pages, since the pockets are located on the outside of the plastic folder instead of the interior.  You can also slide the plastic stencil into these folders and then add the refill paper inserts.  They are sized big enough to hold some paint brushes or pens.  I found them perfectly sized to hold the Jane Davenport stickers sets that I purchased at Michael's.  

Jane Davenport Butterfly Effect Book Stencil and Washi Holder:
Additionally, the Jane Davenport Mixed Media Line of products for the Jane Davenport Butterfly Effects book also has some really cool stencils and Washi Paper holders.

These are created to work well in both the Jane Davenport Butterfly Effect Books and her new line of Art Journals.

If you want to read my review of the Jane Davenport watercolors, Gel Mediums, Jane Davenport Acrylic Paint Sets, or the Jane Davenport Mermaid Markers, just click on the name or use the search engine provided on this page.


NOTE: I do not work for Michael's, American Crafts or Jane Davenport.  I purchased all the above items with my own money at Michael's.  I am not affiliated with any of the above companies, either.
My opinions are my own, and may vary from others who use and review the same products.

Jane Davenport Mermaid Markers Review

The Jane Davenport Mermaid Markers are water brush markers (ink filled brush pens) that have been filled with dye based inks that make it easy to use incorporate these beautiful ink colors into your mixed media projects.  I love working with brush pens and have purchased them in the past to fill with my favorite inks before.  I found that the price point on these markers of $39.99 at Michaels was quite reasonable.  Since I had a 40% off coupon when I purchased mine, this really lowered the price significantly.

One of the things that I first removed the Mermaid Markers from the packaging,

I notice there was a green stopper between the barrel and the ink reservoir.

First I removed the screw on lid. Then I removed the brush marker barrel from the ink reservoir.  I then removed the yellow green ring from the reservoir and carefully screwed all the pieces back together.

If you look at the clear plastic ink reservoir, you will notice a slightly indented area that has the words "push" in raised letters.

I pushed on the two sides of the plastic ink reservoir to release the ink.  That was not a good idea because as I squeezed over a scratch piece of paper, the mermaid makers squirted quite a bit of ink. The red was the biggest culprit, as the ink flows out quite easily from that brush marker.  The green below squirted a lot less ink.

It got all over my hands too.  I tried using a baby wipe to remove it but it only took a little bit of it off.  This makes me think that the ink will hold up well while using in my projects since it dried on my hand so quickly.

I figured out the right amount of pressure needed to squeeze the plastic so that ink would travel down the barrel and onto the brush part.  After that, I did not have any more problems with the ink squirting out in large amounts.

NOTE: I recommend storing these with the brush upright (brush at the top and ink reservoir at the bottom) to avoid any future leakage.  I store all my water brushes this way and have not had any problems with them.

I decided to do a couple of swatches on a variety of papers to see how the Jane Davenport Mermaid Markers would perform.  The first swatch is on Canson Cold Pressed Watercolor paper (140 lb).

The second Swatch is on the JD Marker Paper (this was from one of the butterfly refills) which is really smooth and the colors just goes onto it so beautifully.

The third swatch is on in my Hobonichi Weeks (Tomoe River paper) to see how the colors looked and if I had much bleed to the other side.

Tomoe River paper is ultra thin so I have to be careful what products I use in it.  I was so glad to see there was very little ghosting and no bleed through with these markers. Here is the back side of that page.  The yellow you see is my using a marker to highlight the dates on the page.

I also decided to do a simple swatch to see how the colors blended with each other.  The first swatch is on on Canson Cold Pressed Watercolor paper (140 lb).

The second is on Strathmore Mixed Media (90 lb) paper.

I got better results with the Canson than I did with the Strathmore paper, however the differences were quite minor.

The third swatch is on the Jane Davenport Marker Paper which is so smooth and really shows the beautiful pigments of these markers.

The last is a test of my adding water to the Jane Davenport Mermaid Brush marker swatches to see if I can get a nice watercolor affect.  I really like how easy these mixed with the smallest amount of water to get a nice effect.  The more water I added the lighter the pigment.

Mermaid Brush Pen ink mixed with water.

The regular price point is still pretty good when you consider the quality of the plastic water brush markers and the very pigmented inks that each pen has.  I did check Jane Davenport's Website and the Michaels website to see if there was any information on how light fast the inks are.  However I could not find any information regarding pigment or on how light fast each ink is for the Mermaid Markers Brush pen ink set.  The packaging did have the California Warning that states that this product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth-defects or other reproductive harm.  So I will show the usual care whenever I do use these markers.







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Review Jane Davenport Watercolor Palette Sets

Jane Davenport Petite Watercolor Palettes and Aqua Brushes

Jane Davenport and American Crafts partnered to create this beautiful line of "Petite Watercolor Pallets" in Brights and Neutrals, as well as her new aqua brushes.   Each of the Jane Davenport watercolors pallets come with 12 half pans of watercolors in two different colored metal watercolor tin boxes that can hold more than just the 12 half pans.  If you put a piece of magnet down the center, you can six more half pans to the box, which is a nice feature in these sets.

The Jane Davenport Watercolor Tin

The packaging on these sets is rather simple compared to the acrylic paints, which offer a mini tutorial on the back.

Jane Davenport Watercolor Packaging

Back of the Jane Davenport Watercolor  Box

However, she does have the fabulous video (below) showing how she uses these new paints on her YouTube page, as well as other pieces of her new collection (like the aqua brushes). Additionally, you can sign up for some free tutorials on her website. It is a fairly easy process, just add the free tutorial to your shopping cart and check out.  There is no charge to the user but you do have to go through the whole cart process so that the website is able to track who wants to be emailed when each tutorial is posted.  For those who do not have time to look around her whole website for the free product related workshops, click on this link to go a page that explains the process.


I also purchased the Jane Davenport Aqua Brushes that work beautifully with the watercolors. They are really easy to use and fill with water.  I have had them for two weeks and have not had a single leak yet.

There are two different tips on the brushes and they are marked "A" and "B".

I found that the metal watercolor tins are not very well made, I broke my neutrals one the first time I opened it.  However, I plan on putting them into a larger Meeden Empty Watercolor tin that can hold all 24 colors and a aqua brush.  I thought I would warn you so that you use care when using them and they don't break for you.

Anyway, the tins are lovely and have ring on the bottom to make them easy to hold in your hand when on the road.

The Brights Petite Watercolor Palette comes with 12 colors.

Jane Davenport Watercolor Palette - Brights

I swatched them on the card that came with the watercolor tins. These are bright beautiful colors.

Jane Davenport Brights Watercolor Swatches  on watercolor paper.

Since the swatch paper included in the tin was not a watercolor paper, it really did not give me a good idea of what the colors would look like on watercolor paper. Thus, I swatched them onto a hot press watercolor paper to see what type of results I could get on them. I made the sheet big enough to fit into the travelers notebook so I have it on hand when I need it.

Jane Davenport Petite Watercolor Pallet in Neutral

The Jane Davenport Petite Neutrals Watercolor Palette comes also features 12 colors. These are great for mixing and creating your own skin shades. Again, I swatched the colors onto watercolor paper so I could get a better idea of how the paints will look on various watercolor papers.

Here are both of the cards that were included in the Jane Davenport Watercolor Tins so you can get an idea of how they look on non-watercolored paper.

She does include more information on the colors (like pigments and Light fastness) on her website. Jane Davenport truly understands that many of us what more information and happily provides it on her website.  She has really put a lot of thought into this product line.


NOTE: I do not work for Michaels, American Crafts or Jane Davenport.  I purchased all the above items with my own money at Michaels.  I am not affiliated with any of the above companies, either.
My opinions are my own, and may vary from others who use and review the same products. Also the colors of the paints will vary in accordance to the equipment the viewer is using.  I personally love the product line and hope they add more colors to both the acrylic paint line and watercolors.

Review Jane Davenport Acrylic Paint Sets

Jane Davenport and American Crafts partnered to create this beautiful line of acrylic paints which are currently offered in two collections of four paint colors which are the "Portrait Paints" kit and the "Matte Acrylics" paint set.  Each set comes with four 1.35 ounce tubes of paint, a paint brush and a stencil.  The packaging on these kits is fabulous.  The back has almost a mini tutorial of how to use the paint.

Additionally, Jane Davenport invites the user to go to her website to sign up for some free tutorials on how to use her product line.

She also has a blog connected to website that is great to read.  Jane Davenport also has videos on her YouTube Channel that introduce the various bits of her new line.  Below is one of her videos on the matte acrylic paint set.



The Portrait Paints Kit comes with:

• 2 Flesh colored (light and medium tones) Acrylic Paints
• 1 Pink colored acrylic paint
• 1 Peach colored acrylic paint
• 1 paint brush
• 1 face stencil

The colors in the Portrait Paints are less opaque than the Matte Colors, and that is perfect.  They can be layered to create a more opaque coverage.  I personally like it when my paints offer me that flexibility. It saves me from having to add a gel medium to get a less opaque coverage.

Jane Davenport Portrait Paint Set

The stencil is so fabulous. I do not draw faces very well, so this is so helpful to me.  Below is how easy it was to lay over a water color page I did to test the water colors.

Jane Davenport Stencil and Watercolor Paints

It is also flexible since you can reverse the direction that the face is facing by flipping the stencil over like I did below.  I was testing out the matte paints to see how well they covered. I just used the page to clean off the small amounts of paints on the brush and then used the stencil to draw a face over the paints wipes.

Jane Davenport Stencil and Matte Paints

The "Matte Acrylics" Paint Set comes with:

• 1 Pink Colored Acrylic Paint
• 1 Teal or Light Blue Colored Acrylic Paint
• 1 Purple Colored Acrylic Paint
• 1 Dark Blue Colored Acrylic Paint

The color in the Matte Acrylics Paint set are very opaque.  I had to use a very light hand to get a less intensive result with these.  However, I did mix them with a gel medium that allowed me to have a less opaque coverage.

The Jane Davenport Matte Acrylic Set

Below is a test swatch that I did in the my canvas journal (hot press watercolor paper).  I apologize for the lighting, the weather when I took this was bad and my lighting was affected by that.  However, you can see how opaque the paints are.

The Jane Davenport Acrylic Paint Sets by American Crafts are beautiful.  They paints are creamy and really glide across the watercolor paper and the other papers that I tested them out on.  Because the paints are thicker than the usual craft store acrylics, I found I could get some of the same fun results that I achieve with the artist quality acrylic paints.  They also mix well with my gel medium, my sand medium and few others that I had on hand.  At the price point of $19.99 these are a really good deal.  A little of this paint goes a long way.


NOTE: I do not work for Michaels, American Crafts or Jane Davenport.  I purchased all the above items with my own money at Michaels.  I am not affiliated with any of the above companies, either.
My opinions are my own, and may vary from others who use and review the same products. However, I personally love the product line and hope they add more colors to the acrylic paint line.