This summer, we scraped together a traveler’s breakfast and left our airbnb to find Kyobo Bookstore, a sprawling underground bookstore in a Seoul subway station.

My husband took us here specifically so I could find paints. I’d had a some rough days on our trip—culture shock and sensory issues do not mix well—and he wanted to make sure we bought something that I could take home and enjoy.

We stayed far past lunchtime. Our stomachs rumbled and we risked hanger just to stick around the stationary section for five more minutes…and then another five minutes more. My son stood in front of the wood craft kits, watching an info video on all the different things you can make. My husband ogled the Montblanc display. I circled the pens and pencils and markers like a shark, until I widened my view just a little bit—and there it was. A nook just for art supplies. Paints, pastels, palettes.

My tendency is to pick two items out of the ten that I’d like, and call it good. We’re a frugal family, after all. As I chose my two colors, my husband came up behind me.

“Why don’t you get more?” he asked.

He pushed me to choose up more, and more, and more, until I had eight colors selected. I told him that I had been eyeing the metal palettes as well, and soon that was in our shopping basket as well. He got in the line to buy our things and asked the lady at the counter to wrap the paints up in a bag, because he’s learned by now that watercolor paint tubes need to be handled delicately.

Before we got too hungry, we left the subway on a hunt for kimbap, shopping bag hanging from my husband’s arm. A few days later, we packed our life-on-the-go as strategically as possible and flew home. I’ll be honest with you. I love home, but Southern California now looked ugly. The enormous parking lots, the dull sky, the scraggly plants.

I didn’t leave the house for three days. I slept off jet lag and slowly unpacked. When everything felt less chaotic, I cleared off the dining table, carefully washed the new palette, and opened my packet of colors.

Finally! Time for Chunky Flowers

I love organizing colors. Whenever I paint my nails, I line the nail polish up in a shimmery rainbow before I pick what I want to wear. When I set aside time to enjoy my new paint colors, I lined them up along the palette. Yellow here, purple, here, and so on.

Everything came together slowly and quietly. Just how I like it. And then? It was time to paint. You can see my painting process in my latest youtube video and you can buy three new card designs below.