Travel Watercolor Set

by kariswg1

11K2913

Intro: Travel Watercolor Set

I went to a dollar store looking for tin boxes to create an instructable that I could use. I found a Sucrets Complete tin of 18 lozenges, packed in three tiers of six each, in their own individual plastic wells.

STEP 1:

I removed each of the lozenges from the three trays, and saved them for a future cold. The hardest part was removing all of the foil from the plastic.

STEP 2:

After removing all of the foil, and washing out each tray, I filled them with my own watercolor paint. I added a few drops of water, to each color, to dilute, and even out the paint in the tray.

STEP 3:

I repeated the previous step with the other two trays. (The hardest part (again) is removing all of the foil.) Now I had three trays with eighteen of my favorite watercolors. I let all of the paint dry completely. I then cut out three seperator sheets (from any thin plastic) to put between them, to keep them from seating into the above tray when stacked into the tin.

STEP 4:

Now grab your favorite small brush and sketchbook, and go anywhere to paint. We will be going on a cruise, where packing is at a premium, so this will work out just great. I'll probably even bring my lozenges with me (just in case). Enjoy!

13 Comments

johnhaddad 10 years ago

Very clever. I'm going to try this out. Thanks for sharing.

mygreenhome 12 years ago

For a glue, I've heard that rubber cement is the best glue for this sort of project. It's waterproof and easily removable if necessary.

mole1 14 years ago

If you have the tin but no tray, it's possible to use bottle caps. Someone was throwing away a bag of 100+ white caps to small laboratory bottles. I scarfed them up as useful for something someday. Perfect for watercolors! About 12 fit in an old (from the age before trays) Sucrets tin. They're deeper than trays, so added water wasn't needed. You can change out color schemes one color at a time. For rougher travel, you might want to glue gun them in.

kariswg1 14 years ago

I like the idea of bottle caps. You could hot glue them to a stiff sheet (cut to size of of the "tin"), and create custom trays, that would stack, and travel well. Hot glue holds really well, but isn't permanent.

kariswg1 14 years ago

UPDATE!, hot glue melts very thin plastic, epoxy glue may be a better choice in some cases...test your materials.

mole1 14 years ago

Yes! Definitely test your materials!! I used LOW-TEMP hot glue and it was ok on the caps I had, but that doesn't mean much - caps get made out of a lot of different kinds of plastic.

bluefly1215 14 years ago

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT... 
If you use your tin out in the cold and you have used hot glue to adhere your bottle caps, the glue will freeze and pop off. Cold Hot glue doesn't work. 

mole1 14 years ago

Thanks for mentioning that. I hadn't tried using them anywhere that cold.  Will definitely keep it in mind.
I know Hot hot glue doesn't work... tried to plug garden hose irrigation holes. Worked great on the cool overcast day when I did it...he next sunny day melted them all out. 

tecneeq 14 years ago

Step 2 looks like tiny Unicorn poop ;).

kariswg1 14 years ago

the fact that you even know what Unicorn poop looks like kind of disturbs me.. :)

ARTstar79 14 years ago

that is so freakin awesome! Im just about to go travelling & this is so so cute & perfect.... :)

lemonie 14 years ago

That's pretty neat, nice use of a non-mint tin and blisters. L