It’s a great idea to have a portable paint palette on hand when you’re shopping for new decor and accessories, but not a concept I had considered in depth. Beyond stuffing paper paint chips into my wallet, I hadn’t really entertained there being other easy-to-carry or all-in-one options to make sure I wasn’t investing in clashing shades of green. However, one specific example has been circulating Pinterest for quite some time, and sure, it’s cute. Sleek, attractive, perhaps the holy grail of the travel-sized home decor color palette, infused with tsotchkie-matchiness-madness.
I sense a trend:
In making one of my own, I considered two options:
1. Use chunks of driftwood that I cut when I made my driftwood magnets. Drilled, painted, and strung together, they’d make an easy to grab chain when I was headed out to shop. Maybe a little bulky.
2. Similarly, pieces of black walnut, cut thin from scraps set aside when building the new living room end table would have been easy to link together. They’d also offer a greater surface area, which is maybe important. Although, kind of a lot to carry.
My main issue? I don’t carry purses or bags often, especially now that I’m not carting myself into the office every day. I’ve instead clung to my little Orla Kiely wallet, something that I invested in and have owned for 4+ years. If I were to say anything about it, it’s durable as could be, easy to carry, and while it doesn’t hold everything, I can fit the essentials. It’s been through a lot, and still looks like new. I’d say that I’m getting good return on my original $90 investment.
What can I say, I heart it big time.
When it came to making a traveling palette, the better solution for me and my wallet was to create a tiny but still resourceful interpretation, maybe in the shape of another object I’m usually carrying, like, a pen.
Scrap dowel from my cardboard lampshade project ended up being perfect for the job.
Very simply, I cut the the dowel to length, sanded and primed it, and began to paint. Each color had a tight 3/4″ allowance of space to fit in of the 10 colors I outlined in my palette (no pink, because I cleaned that quart dry, and no Kona/Jacobean, because I kind of forgot about it).
Slowly, I did two coats of each color, and organized the sequence placing similar colors adjacent; doing so really helped to show how they contrasted. For example, if they were separated further apart, the two gold/greens at the top might have been harder to distinguish a difference in, but side-by-side there’s a visible contrast. Same goes for the white, light blue, and light gray colors on the bottom half.
And it fits perfectly into my little carry-all.
Armed and ready for some coordinating decor action.
How have you interpreted this clever tool?
P.S. – Thanks to Rochester’s Democrat & Chronicle for publishing this feature over the weekend!
6 Comments
Clever! Currently I just have paint chips shoved in my wallet (since I don’t always carry a purse either). I might have to rethink the idea since they sometimes get in the way of the zipper.
Paint chip bulkiness was the problem I was hoping to fix; carrying 10-12 chips was getting to be a little much. Glad you like.
Oh yes. I have…12ish? in my wallet. Most of them are the large, 3-color Valspar chips, too. Fortunately they JUUUUST fit, but I think I need to do something else.
Awesome! I keep seeing this and am thinking of doing the keychain of paint chips and leaving it in my car. :)
I also thought of stringing them on elastic to be a quick/easy-to-carry bracelet or a necklace that I can tuck beneath my jacket. The bracelet, using the driftwood circles seemed like it might work, but I (personally) imagined myself getting annoyed with it.
Great idea. It’s great to see what people do to carry their paint colours around.