 Well, hi there. I'm Sandy Allnach Artist and paper crafter here on YouTube with an ode to tiny pallets because anything shrunk small is really cute, right? And we have to have it all. Well, I am getting tiny pallets for a trip to Puerto Rico that I am taking and I'm gonna do it as a watercolor fundraiser. So I'm gonna paint there. I'm also gonna take photos while I'm there, paint when I get back, then auction off all of the works to raise funds for the good people of Puerto Rico. So I'm excited to get there to do my painting. You can follow me on Instagram and see what I'm doing along the way. Now these are the four pallets that I decided to take with me. I chose them because they're small. You can see compared to the penny there, how small they are. And I also chose them in conjunction with my friend, Lisa Spangler, who's reviewing her pallets as well. She has tiny pallets. She uses when she backpacks and she's gonna tell you what she thinks of hers. I went through heck and back trying to pick out my colors to take with me which colors to put in which of the four pallets. Because I've found that in my classes that I've taken from watercolor instructors, they really limit their pallets to like six or eight colors. And I don't need all the colors. So it's kind of crazy. But I also wanted pallets where I could stick my big fat brushes in there. I want to take my big brushes and do big works and big things. Yeah. I needed to do something a little different. So I fought with myself over the colors and I'm going to share what my final decisions were in this video and over on the blog. First little pallet is the cutest. Oh my gosh. It's a wristband pallet and it has a little gold tray. And you fit these little pallets inside of it. They have magnetic on the bottom. So it's not going to move around when you stick your big fat brush in there. But look how big these wells are. I'm kind of excited about that. There's only three colors. So I did one of the pallets with a red, yellow, blue, because you can mix pretty much anything out of a red, yellow and blue. And I'm going to do the other one with one of my recent successful combinations, shall I say? Which was a little bit of sap green, a little bit of yellow ochre and a little bit of moon glow. So I don't know if that's going to work out for Puerto Rico colors or not, but we'll see. And you put the wristband, which is very comfortable around your wrist and stick the velcro on it and it just stays there. And I'm curious to see how that actually is going to work out in terms of comfort and ease of painting. I am swatching out the colors and I'll post these on my blog if you want swatches of the final colors that I've picked. But I'm not going to really need them in the pallets because I'm using small limited pallet colors. I am going to potentially tuck them in the pockets of my backpack or something just so I have them in case I want to refer to anything. But something like this, it's really easy to know which color is which. And I know how these colors react because I'm very used to each one of them for the most part. This little guy is actually a makeup tray that somebody has decided to be really smart and turn into watercolor pallets. There's a little magnetic on the bottom so the pans stick in there and it comes with a little brush, which I haven't really tested out yet, but it's a number four and I don't really use a small number four. I do have a number four travel brush from the Silver Brush Company. You know, those are my favorite brushes. You can see the size of that head compared to the other one. But this one actually extends. I like the fact that the Silver Brushes extend. But this number eight travel brush is probably going to be the smallest I'll use on this trip. I think, except for maybe some fine details that I may add on something. But I'm going to try to keep myself painting loose on this trip. That's really what I've been trying to accomplish in all these watercolor classes and it's really hard. But the bigger brushes I use, the better off I am. So at the end of the video, I will show you what brushes I'm taking with me as well. If you're curious about that. This palette, I'm putting in all blues and I figured this would be great if I'm just going to go out to the ocean and paint the water in the sky and that's it. So I have some blues and blue grays and gray type of colors so that I have them all in one little grouping. Might be helpful. This company also sent me five other pans. So I might take another set of colors. I don't really know. Haven't decided yet at the time of this voiceover. But I am going to take this palette and see how it works out. And we'll report back to you later on because it's really tiny, super tiny cute. Next up is this Woodward and Father. And the palette itself is a little over three and a half inches because if you put an insert in it, it's three and a half by three and a half. If you want a swatch insert in the top. But what they've done with these same pans that you saw in the last one and they do have metallic on them and they do have a magnetic in the base but they've painted them so that you're looking at your color against white instead of looking at it against silver, which is interesting. And we'll make the mixing well easier at the top end of it. Some people when they fill these pans have put them on the end of a long magnet. So if you have a misty and you have that long rectangular magnet you can use that to hold them with. But what I chose to do was put just a few of the pans in at a time and fill them and then move them around and slide them to the place that I want them to be and kind of work my way from the outside to the inside. This collection is called the Big Brush Palette because it has the larger pans in it. They have all kinds of different combinations on their Etsy store so that you can get one where you have 36 colors in this one little teeny tiny palette. It's really low profile, really great for backpackers if you're taking something really small with you and you don't have much room and you want a lot of colors. You could get a ton of colors in there. But again, six or eight colors is what most people use. So there you go. And the colors in this I chose because they were much brighter colors and I know the buildings in Puerto Rico look like they are painted in bright colors and that sort of thing. Can't wait to see what all of that actually looks like in real life. There are three colors in here that are not Daniel Smith colors. There's that lavender that's in the second row, third one over. That's a Holbein and it's opaque. And a lot of my teachers use that instead of the Daniel Smith lavender. So I'm going to test it out on this trip and see if I like it better in the times I would normally use the Daniel Smith lavender and then on the bottom those two flesh tone type colors are Joan Brilliant one and Joan Brilliant two. Also both Holbein and also very opaque and they're used for things like adding a highlight back in on a face or on a you know, something that is going to be that kind of a color and you could use those in addition or instead of white if you don't want bright white highlights added back into something. So that is that palette and as I said very thin profile that sort of thing holds a lot of colors my big brushes are going to fit into those big palettes or those big wells really nicely. And then there's this one I got for cuteness sake. My big brushes won't fit in it but it just looked really interesting so I decided to try it. It has a leather cover and it's stamped with something that I can't read because it's in I'm guessing Chinese, Japanese something like that. Very nice leather cover and then has these two pieces one is a mixing well and the other holds the paints and has a little well for water in it. I have tried out the mixing well and even Phthalo Blue does not stain whatever they've painted it with so that's pretty cool and they seem to be hand carved wells which is kind of fun too. They come with paints in them but I asked for them not to put the paints in because I wanted to put my own colors. He also asked if that was the right number of holes that I wanted so you can actually ask them to give you a different number of holes. This block feels so good in your hand. It's really comfortable and I'm curious to see how that's going to go because I can't hold that and hold the mixing wells so I'm not really sure how this is going to play out in a plein air situation but what I decided to do since I also can't swap out the colors very easily because they get squeezed into these tiny holes is I used my colors from my dot card and my dot card is something where Daniel Smith comes to an artist and they say what are your favorite colors we want to produce a card that has sample dots so that people can try out your colors so I used that as my basis for choosing the colors for this one because at least I know I will use this in crafting even if it doesn't work out because I can't use my big fat brushes with it but I really love the feel of this one I love the natural feel the handmade feel of using wood and those carved out wells are really fun I mean there's just something really nice about it I also want to find out what he painted those wells with since Phthalo Blue does not seem to stain although I haven't done extensive testing I did do some and it did not stain so that was kind of cool because Phthalo Blue stains everything so swatching out my little colors here and again you can tape this onto the bottom of the palette if you want to have it handy or something but since I know these colors really well once I am really familiar with their locations in here I'm not going to need to have the swatch card with me even if I may carry it with me in my backpack because who knows I might meet somebody who wants to see what colors are in my palette and there you go isn't that cute? it's absolutely adorable on the blog are all my swatch cards with actual texts so you can read the colors that they are if you need to add a color to your collection but look how small this thing is it's really cool and I think even on a plane it might work well for me doing my Bible journaling on a plane or doing some coloring book work on a plane so there are my finished filled up palettes which I am excited to test out and I will report back to you later on which paintings got made from which palette when I do the fundraiser so stay tuned for that to see what color combinations seemed to work for the kinds of things you want to paint I promised my brushes so these are about the brushes that I'm going to take I may add one or two more because I can't leave them home couple of mop brushes in addition to those little travel brushes on the right couple mops a liner brush which I don't use very often but I'm going to take it and see I have a couple of my normal round brushes and then I'm taking my expensive needle and my Windsor Newton series 7 these are ridiculously expensive I thought if I bought them they would make me a good painter they haven't yet but I'm going to give them a chance in Puerto Rico and a flat brush to do washes with and a spray bottle to sprints with sketchbook wise I was so excited to see this at a class that I just took from Elvaro Castagnet he signed it for me and he put together the sketchbook that has toned paper in the front of it for charcoal drawings but look it's got sheets of stuff in between so that you can use both sides of the paper and not smush things cool idea to have that second section is all rough watercolor paper arches rough bunch of pages of that and then in the back is drawing paper like I can do everything in one sketchbook I don't have to carry three sketchbooks I'm so excited okay stop squealing this is something he painted for me he was teaching us how to paint suggestive people so if you're doing a whole cityscape and you need to just do some sketches of people he was teaching us how to do that he did one in my sketchbook for me I'm also taking two of my blocks and these are both watercolor blocks with rough paper and I'm going to use these instead of taking sheets of paper the blocks come sealed all the way around except for that top section you stick a knife in it slide it all the way around and that peels up that piece of paper so you can work on the next one and then you don't need to tape anything down so that's what I'm taking to go paint in Puerto Rico we're going to do that watercolor fundraiser sometime this summer so stay tuned for that I will put an announcement here on YouTube since I know a lot of you don't subscribe to the blog but if you would like to get the swatches and the colors and everything from these palettes they're going to be listed down in the description as well as pictured over on my blog so if you want to check all that out you're welcome to do that and I'm going to miss my puppies who are staying home with the dog sitter but I hope you will also go over and visit my friend Lisa who is doing an ode to her tiny palettes on her blog I will have a link to that in the description as well see you guys later bye bye