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Friday, December 13, 2013

The Most Portable Pastel Kit Ever!

'Santa Comes to St. Thomas'         5x7           pastel         ©Karen Margulis
I am headed back to the Caribbean!  I am taking a girls Pre-Christmas Cruise with my Mom, sister and daughter.  All I want to do is relax! I have a pile of books to read and my new GoPro camera to play with.  I wasn't even going to take any pastels.  I know.... I have the Gogh Box. I have my small kit that I took on my Southwest trip.  But I thought it would be a good thing to just take my sketch book and just take pictures, sketch and observe.  A Painting Break might not be a bad thing.  And I may do it.

But just in case I got an overwhelming urge to paint I need to have some supplies!

So I put together my smallest pastel kit ever.  If you saw my Black Friday Haul video yesterday then you got a sneak peek at my kit.  Here is is below. Let me describe what I did:



Everything I need to paint small pastel paintings (5x7 or less) fit nicely in this soft-sided Bible cover.  This is a zippered book cover that measures 8x10 and has two outside pockets. Oh and it is even reversible!  I paid $8 for the cover. 

To outfit the kit I filled a small Terry Ludwig pastel box with a selection of pastel pieces. I wanted an assortment of darks and lights and then filled in with middle values.  I really needed a bit more space for some Nupastels and charcoal so I filled up a small 4x4" box.  I made sure the boxes had two layers of foam and I used rubber bands to keep the lids secure.  It is important that you can't hear the pastels move when you shake the box. Here are some of the other supplies I fit in the kit:
  • My backing board which is a piece of 5x7 foam core that I put in a Clearbag for protection.
  • A small bulldog clip to clip the paper to my board.
  • baby wipes...travel size
  • A small notepad to slip the finished paintings into....I happened to find a nice travel themed plastic coated notepad!  I am using a binder clip to keep it closed so the paintings won't fall out.
  • A selection of papers. I am going to paint minis....2.5x3.5  but paper up to 5x7 will fit in this kit.
  • A small watercolor kit (in a pill case) and a water brush.




my pastels

The kit all zippered up and ready to travel!
I love this little kit. It will fit in my backpack and my beach bag so if I really need to paint I can.  Just know it is there should be enough to keep me from having withdrawal. But it is so cut I may just have to use it!

While I am away I have prepared some of my favorite posts from 2013. Internet on a ship is slow and expensive so I will do my best to get the posts published but if you don't hear from me I'll be back online on December 22!

2 comments:

Mariela said...

Beautiful kit and interesting information Karen, thank you!
have a nice trip!

robertsloan2art said...

Bon Voyage! I love your travel kit, that's so tight and elegant! Unisons boxes are so good for packing up more colors than came in them, the foam in those is really good. Worth getting a small set for the box, aside from that they're less expensive in sets than open stock.

It sounds like a wonderful trip! I'll enjoy anything you have posted and look forward to see what you paint in the Caribbean. Love seeing Santa's tropical vacation, that's a great little painting!

Enjoy!