Creative Custom Pans
I recently met a wonderful artist by the name of Jerry, who shared with me how he’s customized his Pocket Palette. Jerry wanted to carry more colors in a single palette, and came up with a creative solution. He divided the standard palette pans with brass rods, soldering them in place and grinding them smooth. To finish, he painted the interiors with white enamel and the exteriors with a durable black paint. According to Jerry, this process was labor intensive, but the pans should last a long time! Lucky for me, he sent me a set to experiment with–now I just need to decide on all the extra colors I can bring!
15 Responses to “Creative Custom Pans”
Mary Lou Peters
Wow–what a creative way to do this! Amazing, Jerry! I have two palettes–each with different colors.
astrid
You are very blessed, that looks amazing. I have resorted to carrying 2 pocket palettes (hee,hee) and trading them out at times
Natalie
I love this! But for a less labor-intensive method, I wonder if one could create temporary dividers with a carefully placed strip of hot glue in each pan?
Maria
Sounds like a great idea! If you try it, let me know how it goes. :)
Rin
I can’t speak to hot gluing in one of Maria’s lovely kits, but I’m using emptied dollar store eyeshadow palettes and the hot glue as a divider seems to be working so far. This is mostly on plastic, though I’ve used one to divide an aluminum pan and it seems to be behaving. My kiddo’s Daler Rowney pocket box has taken similar treatment in the back ledge to let her add a few sections from tube colors.
Crystal
I have a Winsor and Newton Cotman Sketchers box. It has a small spot above the pans to hold a tiny travel brush. Instead I put lines of hot glue to divide it into areas for paint. It works great for me!
You can see what it looked like before here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BKzg23aAxWM/?taken-by=crystalkaei
and this is after:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BM3NoTVg1yA/?taken-by=crystalkaei
I imagine that it would work out great for the awesome pocket palette too.
Maria
Nicely done, thank you for sharing your palette, Crystal!
Kathleen Evans
Where/how can I buy a Pocket Palette?
Maria
Hi Kathleen! The Pocket Palette and my other Art Toolkit supplies are all available in my Shop. Thank you!
Bonnie
Would you be able to sell Jerry’s divided color pans as an accessory? Or does he sell them?
Maria
Hi Bonnie, the divided pans are labor intensive with the soldered metal and unfortunately are not for sale. One idea for making your own, though, would be to try Sugru! It’s available at most hardware stores.
Sandee
I used Sugru and it worked. But it did use a lot of space in the pan — it was hard to get it to be narrow and yet tall enough.
Maria
Thanks for sharing your experiences with Sugru, let me know if you come across a better solution! I confess, I’m not currently using any divided pans, it’s just so easy to carry two palettes when I want more color options. That being said, I do love tinkering with materials. :)
bep
Hi Maria,
I recently discovered your wonderfull products and managed to buy some stuff in Spain (I live in the Netherlands and helas couldn’t find any retailer nearby). Is it possible to use a large pan as a mixing tray? I bought “normal” pans instead of mixing pans. What will the effect be for my pans?
Maria
The pans should work fine, I just find it can be a little easier to see your mixed colors on a white vs. silver surface. You can always paint your pans with a white enamel (such as spray-paint or nail polish) if you’d like to customize them yourself! Good luck and have fun.