DIY Mini Watercolor Palette

It’s 1 am. You can’t sleep. What do you do?

MAKE A MINI WATERCOLOR KIT OF COURSE!!!

I fall into this bad habit of when I want to go to sleep my brain suddenly and without warning just wants to ~*,BE ARTISTIC,*~ and make something pretty. So, I put on The Office in the background, pull up Pinterest for inspiration and then proceed to stay up until 4 in the morning, creating mediocre content.

This mini watercolor kit is the result of such an episode.

I am studying abroad soon ( IN 6 DAYS! AH ) and I really want to just go sit in a random park and just paint, you know? However, I do not want to be traveling with ALL my watercolor tubes. Its a lot of supplies to be lugging around. I’ve been seeing a trend on Etsy where people have been creating their own mini watercolor sets in old Altoids containers with their homemade watercolor pigments like true Etsy queens. I don’t have ANY of the supplies to do THAT (sadly). So I grabbed the next best thing: an old eyeshadow palette I have had since middle school that I really should have thrown away by now.

(Shout out to my Star Wars T-shirt you can see in the mirror <3)

To make your own Mini Watercolor Kit you will need:

• 1 Old Eyeshadow Palette (preferably from middle school or older)

• Liquid Watercolor Paints

• Something to poke with (a safety pin, mini knife, an even mini-er knife etc.)

• Wipes

• A Sharpie

1. Using your pokey thing of choice, clean out the eyeshadow palette by destroying the makeup inside, demolishing it to a fine powder. (Don't forget to get a sweet video for the oddly satisfying snapchat story)

2. Using your wipes, clean up your mess and the palette, making it look as good as it did seven years ago.

3. Fill the sections up with your watercolors of choice.

4. Decorate with a sharpie.

(Sadly I don't have pictures of each step I did because it was 3 in the morning and I was sleep deprived so I'm lucky it came out decent tbh)

BOOM! THAT. EASY.

When it comes to choosing colors, you do you babe. However, I recommend starting out with the primary colors so you can have any color you want.

“BUT BRI WHENEVER I MIX COLORS THEY LOOK GROSS.”

PRO TIP: Before you pick your color palette, test how they mix together.

All colors are either warm or cool. When mixing you want to pick colors from the same family, like a warm red and a warm blue. If you mix a cool and a warm you get muddy colors.

To determine if a color is warm or cool, paint a swatch and see what bias it has.

Vermilion is a warm red, you can see it has elements of yellow, giving it a orange hue to it.

Ultramarine is a cool blue, it lacks any red. If it was a warm blue it would have a purple hue to it.

When you mix them you get a really muddy purple because the warm red is bringing in yellow. Yellow, red, and blue, make brown.

Brilliant, Phthalo, and Gamboge are all in the cool family. So they all get along great!

If this whole color theory thing confuses you here's a good link to check out!

If it still confuses you, just try mixing them yourself! You can see the difference between a good mix and a bad mix!

To complete the whole kit, I found a small travel bag, cut some watercolor paper down, and added a water brush to make painting on the go easier!

Have fun making your own mini paint kit of your own! Now I just gotta figure out how to make a tiny paintbrush to really make it a mini kit.... 💛🐝