I’ve wanted a mint tin palette for a long time, and finally decided to build one. The thing that tipped me over the edge (besides being unhappy with all my other travel palettes) was opening a pack of gum and finding this plastic carrier inside.

Looks like a mixing area to me! I’m forever dropping mixes at the sides of the palette, because the edges offer a place to wipe the brush and squeeze out more paint for the mix.

Well, this has a lot of edges, and the price was sure right. Looks to be about the right size too.

If you wanted to use one of these plastic liners as palette wells, it does fit as-is inside the main body of the tin. My goal was to secure this inside the *lid* and place pans into the space below, so for that, it had to be small enough to allow the lid to swing freely and close. Had to trim it right to the very edges to accomplish this, including trimming out the center rib so the two pieces could be pushed right together in the middle.

Scissors worked fine for that. The color is a little distracting, but for now I used blue tack to position it. Once the position was adjusted, the lid opens and closes without catching:

For now the white background is just a sticker I had handy. Someday I may give it a proper coat of paint, but it’s not supposed to be a wet surface, so the paper got the job done for now. As you’ll see next, eventually I trimmed out that little ribbed bit on the left and stuck an extra pan there  Here is the finished tin, with mixing wells obviously in use!

And here’s the pigments used, which actually took me much longer to decide on than it took to make the actual palette. I’ve been thinking and thinking about this, moving pans in and out, and painting swatches for days!

Originally posted on WetCanvas.com.