How To Refill Your Travel Watercolor Palette {and get every drop of paint

hi there Lindsay here the frugal crafter
today I'm going to show you how to
refill your watercolor travel kits so I
know a lot of you guys are buying these
and you're painting and you're excited
and pretty soon your palettes are going
to look like this and if so if they look
like this then good for you that means
you're actually painting and that's so
awesome so I had a lot of palettes that
I work from and what I do is I use two
watercolors and I refill them want a
paint palette when our pan goes empty
and actually my main palette is a
palette I bought empty and then I just
filled with my favorite colors um so
what you want to do here is once your
your paints start to go down like that
you want to just I recommend getting
paint in the tubes it's a lot more
affordable the long run my favorites are
the M gram company artist watercolors
like this here the reason I like them is
they come in larger tubes it's like a
standard watercolor tube let me show you
what a like a Windsor Newton standard -
here okay so here is like this is five
milliliter this is 15 milliliter this
was 879 oh my gosh and this I think I
paid $4 for so even though that sounds
like a lot probably if you haven't water
colored I've been using these paints for
about 15 years you just squeeze out a
little bit you let it dry and then you
keep working so um it's not as crazy as
it seems but I do find the M gram and
company water color to be as good as the
Windsor Newton artist grade so that's
why I've been using those and I've been
very pleased with them and they they're
a wonderful company so what you want to
do is just squeeze out your paint into
your palette tell us about flush of the
edge you don't want to stick up
otherwise might stick to your lid and
then you do that for every one of your
colors now I was hunting through to see
if I had common colors to refill my
cotton pallet with because this is the
palette I'm going to be teaching with
and I was able to find these this set at
blick online for about $14 each that was
I want to make sure that I had enough
supplies for a few students in case
people came without supplies I would be
able to provide for several several
students and so I did that so I wanted
to kind of make sure I was using very
similar colors
so this is like one of the cotman
ultramarine blues so common is a very
very reliable brand of paint it's not
very expensive oh this one might
actually be empty you have to get
different oh my goodness yeah I think
this one's okay so if you get out if you
get a tube and it's like well gee I
think it's empty what you ought to do
before you are ready to toss it um you
want to get like these are metal tubes
let's see if my metal my wire cutters
will cut through that hold on a minute
let me go find them
actually grab my crap job scissors I
think that'll work a little bit better
so I'm just gonna cut the package open
the little tube open I'm gonna see if I
can get in there and see if there's any
color that I can possibly save because
really you can use it till it's
completely gone so I'm gonna get in
there and yeah I do have some color in
there so I just gotta find something I
can scoop it out with like maybe a
little pallet knife or something let's
see if we can get in there and scoop
some of that lovely color out of there
which I think we can look at this see
that's enough to refill a pan of color
and I was just gonna throw it away so
don't do that
open up your palettes and get it out of
there because I mean that's enough for
several paintings I'll see if I can get
some more out of there so think about
that's a great thing about watercolor as
opposed to acrylics or oils that if it
dries in the tube it's still good paint
you can still get in there and get it
out and use it and that's why I think
watercolor is the most affordable medium
I probably should taking that pan right
out of there but that's alright it's
gonna scrape that in there there's a
little frugal tip for you that is
practically dry already it's practically
ready for the pan already I'm gonna need
to clean that up but there you go
so there's a little tip for you now
that's pretty well pretty well empty you
can even use a wet brush in there and
get out the rest on your next painting
if you want it to be super frugal I'm
gonna work with that a little bit more
but you know you just go around and you
fill in your your color shares a little
lemon yellow for this lemon and if
you're not exactly sure what you have
for colors um I'm just looking at like
if I look at this right I look at that
right I can sell see that's a warm
orange red so I want to use like a
Vermillion or cadmium red that's more of
a crimson or roe
so I'll make sure I use a cool read so
just you know make sure you're keeping
in the same you're keeping the same
integrity of the color when you refill
even if you don't have the exact same
name color like personally I prefer a
rose to a crimson to alizarin crimson so
I might refill with rose in that slot so
you know you'll develop your own your
own preferences as you go I'm just gonna
so shared it with my fingers probably
not the best practice but yeah you'll be
fine
wash your hands good this is a hewlet
clean not real cadmium so don't have to
worry about built that completely I'll
probably take up like a toothpick and
just kind of press that in there really
well and of course burnt sienna I use
that a lot and this is one my M Graham
colors and I'm just gonna squeeze out
and oh sometimes this is another
question I got if you look here see
that's really oily sometimes when your
tubes sit in your like in your drawer
for a while unused they they kind of um
they become separated and that's not a
problem but you might want to squirt it
out somewhere else and stir it up again
it's not going to be a it's not going to
affect the paint the paint still fine it
just means you're buying our stuff has
come apart and you like the guts
probably mostly just a little puddle of
glycerin so I'll take a toothpick and
I'll stir that up and get it you know
back to rights again so that's how you
refill your travel set um you can keep
these for years and years you can always
just buy the pans and really let me fill
them but I find getting the tubes is a
lot more economical in the wrong long
run I hope that helped you out of you
any questions please leave a comment
below and keep painting keep using up
that paint so you can keep refilling
it's a good good thing thank you so much
for watching and to like some happy
crafting