DIY pocket watercolor palette

A friend told me how she made her own watercolor palette inspired from the one her art tutor had.

 I tried to do it myself and here are the steps:

Step 1: Pick an eyshadow palette with wells that would roughly make good candidates (I picked 140 × 120 mm and 100 × 280 mm).


Step 2: remove the little alluminium wells carefully and get rid of the eye shadow from those wells patiently and gently. A pointy thing like a needle or a safety pin works great for the task.


Step 3: leave the tiny wells in warm soapy water and scrub them gently with a dish cleaner brush and make sure you've got the corners clean.

Step 4: pat dry them and leave them to dry completely. Arrange them in the business card holder so you pick the final layput and use just those palettes


Step 5: squeeze the watercolors into the palette wells, distribute and leave to dry for over 48 hours.


Step 6: place them in your business card holder and viola!! Enjoy your new pocket palette.


Tip: taping these watercolor wells onto a bit of sitcky tape keeps them together and keeps them from shuffling around and falling off.

The colors I've picked are:


Top row(left to right):
1. Buff Titanium
2. Hansa Yellow
3. Yellow Ochre
4. Quinacridone Gold
5. Raw Sienna
6. Potter's Pink ( W & N )

Middle row (left to right):
1. Undersea green
2. Sap green
3. Cobalt teal blue
4. Cerulean blue chromium
5. Pthalo blue
6. Ultrmarine blue

Bottom row (left to right):
1. Quinacridone Rose
2. Pyrrol crimson
3. Raw umber
4. Burnt sienna
5. Moonglow
6. Deep green (HS)
7. Violet (HS)
8. White (HS)


Note: all the colors are Daniel Smith extra fine watercolors. You can either go for those or Winsor and Newton ( Potter's Pink). I had a cheapie from target -12 color tubes for a total $10 by Hunter Studio.  (Other tubes are $19 - 25 ea based on the series).

The last three are Hunter Studio and have dried out badly and are all cracked. Demonstrates that the price you pay for quality colors is totally worth it.

The process took me my entire weekend ( cleaning the eye shadow palettes and letting the colors dry took the longest of the steps). It has been the most fun time doing  DIY in a long time!

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Update - 19-06-2015 8:50pm
a slightly more truer set of swatches: