My travel watercolor set

I’ve been spending a lot of time on the bus, bringing my son to and from school while we wait for the bus system to get organised. So I’ve started a tiny journal in which I doodle, draw and glue down bits of everyday life. I love it. It’s not too defined, just a place to be creative while I wait. It’s small enough to fit in my purse and I pack a little pencil case with a few essentials.

I wanted to be able to add watercolor on the fly if I wanted to. My watercolor kit was too big though so I went on google to search for tutorials. I found a lot (I will put the links at the end of this post). Making your own travel set is really easy. I recommend it because you can adapt the colors you want to bring with you.

This is the box I chose. it used to hold little mints. I kept it because it has a Mucha painting on it and he is one of my favorite artists.

I decided to use some clay that I had in the house from one of the kids’s parties. I rolled into a fat cylinder, squished into place, made holes in the clay and put the box in the sun to dry.

I let everything dry for 36 hours. Since the clay shrank a little, I glued it into the box. I then chose my colors. This was the hard part. I only had 6 holes and I knew I needed white and black. So I stuck with the primary colors and settled on brown and green for my optional color. I chose these two because I’ll be sketching lots of nature and I figure they are practical color to have already mixed. I simply put the tube of black in my tin because you really don’t need a lot of it so it would be wasted taking up a whole spot.

I let my watercolors dry overnight and here it is, ready to go!

Yesterday I decided to walk back from Central to my place (takes an hour) and test out my kit. SO MUCH FUN! Loved having my tin in my bag.

Here you can see my tiny journal next to my muffin (had to take a break!). In my pencil case I have two small rolls of washi tape, two small ink squares (red and black), two stamps, a glue stick, one waterbrush with black paint, one waterbrush with gold paint, one watercolor brush, a black Tradio pen and one fluorescent pink pen.

Here are the three tutorials I liked. I thought the bottle cap tutorial (the YouTube video) was even better because if you put magnets on the bottom you can change the color selction in your tin. But here in Hong Kong, the caps were not the right size and I was in too much of a hurry to wait! Plus, I already had the clay on hand.

http://nerdfighters.ning.com/profiles/blogs/travel-watercolor-kit-tutorial

http://onegoldenapple.blogspot.hk/2011/04/watercolors-to-go.html

http://youtu.be/rSaRfR6leNo

Have fun!

My travel watercolor set

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