Altoids Tin Pocket-Sized Watercolor Box

Step 3 Build up the interior of the paintbox with the Fimo clay

Here, I'm assuming that your color palette is made of 10 colors. Adjust if necessary.

Cover the interior of the box with a thin (about 3mm or 1/4") layer of Fimo. Once you've covered the interior of the box with Fimo, split it in 10 equal parts using strips of fimo. I started by laying a strip lengthwise in the middle of the tin, separating the interior in 2 long compartments. Then, I put four equally-spaced strips of clay to split each half-tray in 5. Do the same for the second half-tray.

Once you're done, you should have 10 compartments of roughly equal size. Don't hesitate to play around with the clay to make sure that the compartments have the same size. It's also important to make sure that the surface is as smooth as possible. It doesn't need to be perfect, but the nicer it is, the better it will perform. Make sure that there aren't any cracks in your construction. The walls you build need to be wider at the bottom and narrower. This will make nice cup-like compartments to hold the paint.

Make sure that you leave enough room on top of the compartments to fit the plastic mixing plate when you close the tin.

Sorry, I don't have any pictures of the building of the interior of the compartment. It's simple enough, this shouldn't cause a problem and you can look at the final result pictures to get the idea.

Comments

[spystealth1]

You could probably use Sugru instead as the paint might wash out better when you want to change colors and you wouldn't have to bake it.

[angelcj]

methinks it might just be easier to lay a big chunk in the middle, and use the end of something square-ish to imprint compartments in the clay. They'd be more uniform at least. That's what I'm going to try, I'll tell you how it turns out.