 Hey guys I'm zooming you in just a bit so you can see what I'm doing a little better. So I have this V in my bonnet about making a micro mini travel watercolor kit. Something that I literally could like throw in my purse that's really really teeny that I could do a little artwork with. I'm doing like sketches and stuff every day now and carrying around my big kit in my handbag is just not realistic maybe a little micro mini kit that would fit in my little sketch daily bag that would be ideal because that's not very big. So I got this little these are out this is Altoids Smalls like this is a mini many Altoids box this is so little so it literally is like two and three eight by like one and five eighths it's really small and it's only about a half inch tall so and these so what I'm doing is it's going to fit six colors a very basic set. I've taken different kinds of lids these are the lids off of some like spray bottles and these are the lids off of some seed bead tubes like this I save a few empty tubes and bottles and things around for doing things like this with I when my storage space I have for them is full and I don't save anymore but I'm so glad I figured out a way to to use up some of them so on these little black ones from the seed beads we have to cut this little handle off this is my hot knife now a word of caution this is hot and sharp so please do not do this if you're young without the supervision of an adult and please even if you're an adult take all precautions we don't want anybody burning themselves or cutting themselves I got this in the wood crafting department at Michael's and then I'm going to cut about an eighth of an inch off the top because this little black cap is a little bit too big my cuts aren't coming out at exactly straight but I'm not too concerned about that because this knife is hot and sharp it's able to cut through the plastic pretty easily of course you know it helps if I cut it straight through the plastic which I didn't I don't think I've done a single one of these straight okay so then what you can do it what I've been doing is putting my hot knife in the stand here and then I just take the little cap keeping my fingers well away from hot blade and I just turn it so that it's flat facing me and then I just basically just melt the edge to smooth it out a bit it you know if you've really done a great job whacking it off crookedly it's only going to do so much and I've done a couple of these really greatly crooked so yeah you know they're never going to be perfectly straight but it's okay so then this one goes here the little black ones are going to hold a little less paint than the clear ones so my plan was to put some of that colors that I use the most in the clear ones on the clear ones because they're clear I was able to mark it with a black marker where I need to cut doesn't mean it'll come out straight because they haven't and this black plastic is actually a bit harder to cut than I mean the clear plastic is a bit harder to cut than the black plastic so just go slow because if we don't want it anybody to get hurt I don't want me to get hurt as I'm saying that because you all know my middle name is neither patience nor grace all right and it's probably a good thing you can't see me because I'm one of these people and when you cut things that you make faces yeah that's me all right so now it's cut in half and that one will fit right in there and now to clean this uh plastic off of here I'm just going to scrape it with a palette knife and wipe it on some paper towel and turn it off and I'm going to set it aside on the glass this is a glass cutting board so that should it fall out of the stand it lands on the glass and not on my table or something that will catch fire or melt because we want to be safe and I'm going to double check to make sure that it's off and it is all right I'll take a couple minutes to cool off now we have this little micro mini tin with some wells in it so now we're going to glue these in this is going to be like in my handbag or you know tossed around so I want to make sure the paint is not going to go anywhere so this is just e6000 and I'm going to just put it in the I could put it on the bottom of the little oh yeah let's do that I'm going to put it on the bottom of the caps and if a little bit squeezes out I'm okay with that because it'll actually cover the bottom of the tin a bit which will protect it from getting too wet and hopefully it won't get rusty I don't arranged a particular way I'm trying to remember what way that was let's see I think it was like this one more big one okay now while that's drying a bit I'm going to pick some paint colors a six basics for me they may not be the same basics for you but I'm going to pick six basics and I'll be right back okay we've got our micro mini watercolor kit here I've picked out a few tubes of watercolor I'm going to use some of the koi colors that I have I have lots of different brands of paint my favorite is actually Daniel Smith but I have these koi and I think they would be good to use in this kind of a kit I'm not sure about how these two koi tubes dry and if they would crack when they dry so as a precaution we're going to put a little bit of gum arabic in each one of the wells and then when I put the paint in we're going to give it a little bit of a stir I have a basic set of colors that you can mix a lot of different colors from them instead of having two yellows I've put in a pains gray for me that's a must so I have a really nice lemon yellow and I can warm that up a bit by adding just a little bit of red or the vermilion to it just to orange ity up orange it orange it up a little bit I don't know how to say that anyway you all know what I mean a vermilion carmine cerulean blue ultramarine blue and then blick watercolor I almost said blick acrylic it's watercolor and pains gray the blick blick brand is affordable good quality brand from what I've been finding FYI okay so first we're going to take some of our gum arabic which I've put into this easier to pour bottle and I'm going to just put a couple of drops if it will come out it might be it's been a tad a little bit since I've used it let's see seems like it's clogged so let me unclog it I'll be right back it was definitely clogged I just stuck a pin in there now it's unclogged so I'm going to put a couple of drops in each little cap the the blick watercolor probably doesn't need it but it won't hurt anything gum arabic is used as a binder in watercolor paints anyway so it's not going to hurt anything then I'm going to put in our colors in color order starting at the top and going from left to right and then bottom left to right you could fill them up to the top if you want you don't need to probably depends on how long of a trip you're going to be on I was going to be on a long trip this is probably not enough colors or enough paint for me I have a bigger kit in my bigger watercolor palette in my kit that I take with me when I fly you could definitely if you wanted to you could do the color key and you could stick it inside the lid so that you have it right there I've got a bunch of toothpicks here so we're going to just give each one a stir we've got the gum arabic idea from Lindsay the frugal crafter thank you very much she used glycerin which I have but I also have gum arabic so I'm going to use it I need more that paints gray I can't see it going in because the cap is black and the paint is dark so zoom you in you see what I mean so I can't see how much is in there until I gave it a stir and see and just give them a a check and see if you've got enough paint in there I think so so now we need to make a color key and I don't know if I want to stick it in the lid I think I want to leave it loose from the lid because I think I want to use the lid to mix on but I do think that I want to have it fit inside the lid loosely so that I can take it out something like that so let me grab a piece of watercolor paper and then I also have this little tiny pencil which is from Ikea you see there right yeah oops yeah I didn't notice I took it home with me until after we got all the way home and it's a couple hours away from my house so I wasn't going to drive back to return the pencil I have a koi travel water brush this is the medium size brush nib and the nice thing about it is that it breaks up and it also is like micro mini it doesn't hold tons of water but you know this kit isn't intended for doing like tons of painting with anyway and you probably can you know I'm sure there's going to be some place where you are to refill it or if you're like me you always have a water bottle with you that you could refill it from so that's going to work so let me get some watercolor paper and I'm going to show you about making a color key for this sucker and an idea I got from Kathy Johnson who has a youtube channel here about water painting watercolors I'll try to link it below and for making a little micro mini journal so I will be right back okay so I have a scrap of watercolor paper here and I probably should have done this before I put the paints in there but um oh well I'm going to trace around the bottom of the box onto this scrap try to hold the box still and study it's kind of easier so than done all right and then let's cut this out and I'm going to cut it inside the pencil lines and basically I'm going to keep giving it a trim until it fits doesn't have to be perfect but you do want it to fit and I do want a sample of what my colors look like on paper rather than just seeing them in the in the pans there really need to get my reading glasses here we go reading glasses all right so now make sure I'm on camera I'm going to take one of my waterproof fountain pens I've got a couple of them I've got a carbon ink pen which is a really fine nib and then I've got this other one that I just got that is I don't remember the name of it I can't read it but I got it from jet pens if you guys want to know I'll try to put it in the description below um and they both have waterproof ink in them this isn't more of a medium nib it might be too big for this little piece of paper but we'll we're going to find out so I'm just going to kind of eyeball it and draw a grid on here gotta get the pen started first hold on they've both been sitting for a little bit with these fountain pens it's not always a good thing it's too skinny though let's see let's try the fine nib one and then we want to divide it into thirds we're going to write the color names so I'm going to put the brand not that that matters too much in a travel kit because if you forget what brand it is you can just put any lemony yellow color in there I don't think it matters too much but um I'm used to doing it that way now we're going to take um a brush I have a water brush here I don't know how clean it is oh yes see filthy there we go now it's clean so I'm going to dip it a little bit into the yellow and put my swatch each color as I go down now I like to have a more orangey red and a pinky red in my palette I also like to have a more turquoisey blue and then a blue blue those color particular colors are the colors I paint the most with when I'm water coloring and I'm used to mixing with them too so once that dries you could laminate it and then stick back in the lid you want to leave this open until all your little paints are dry all the little all the little paint in the caps are dry if you close it it might get moldy so we want to leave it open while it's doing its thing and it's drying let's um zoom back out again and I will show you what I was um watching Kathy Johnson do the other day and we'll see about making a sort of micro mini watercolor journal all right I will get my paper I'll be right back okay this is a sheet of 9 by 12 watercolor paper and I think if I use the whole thing this is going to be a lot bigger than I want it to be so we're gonna chop some off I am going to let's see I think I'm gonna do like I want to do at least 8 inches wide and then I don't want it to be so long longer it is the more pages this is gonna have we're gonna do 8 by 10 so now you take your watercolor paper and fold it in half and it's watercolor paper so it's gonna be persnickety about being folded here's my ball folder then you're gonna fold these cut edges up to the raw edge and fold each side in half again and I'm not worried about these like marks that are getting on here this is you know I'm not concerned about that at all this is like a micro mini little travel journal it's gonna get scuffed up in the marked it might bug you though so then if that's the case you want to make sure all your tools are really clean your cutting mat's really clean okay so now you have this paper it's got these four three creases in it four sections and if you you know I have to say so this probably will work with some of it so if you take a baby wipe and see it's gonna it doesn't really get it off but it just kind of spreads it out and it takes some of it off some of the marks anyway all right now we're gonna do it the other way so now we're gonna straighten out our paper and we're gonna fold it this way and do the same thing that we just did so now we have this creased piece of watercolor paper now you need a exacto knife and a straight edge I just have an exacto knife there it is that's not my straight edge so we're gonna go the long ways on the paper and we're gonna cut along this fold and we're gonna cut up to we're gonna cut up to this fold this fold on my left so one square two square three squares not quite just below the fourth square I'll link Kathy's video below she explains it much better than I do probably because she's done it a million times there we go then we're gonna skip this one and we're gonna do this one over here the same way we're gonna flip this around and we're gonna cut the same way but we're gonna cut from the opposite direction up the middle and leave these two squares connected over here okay so then you have this kind of this kind of piece of paper then you just start folding is that not the cleverest thing you've ever seen or what so now you have this journal and you could just paint on these sides you could you know when you get to this kind of thing do like a taller picture and you can do this with a really she does it with a really big sheets of paper and she paints on all the all the sides of the little journal and she puts a cover on it and I do think I want to do that now see my cuts weren't completely straight so my edges are kind of caddy want this but that's okay all right so now we want to do something about a cover I want to put a clip on this so it doesn't like expand all over the place there we go I'm going to get some chipboard I'll be right back so I've got two little pieces of chipboard they're cut about an eighth of an inch bigger than my little stack of pages I want to cover them with I was thinking just some scrap papers and I have this little box of just literally just little bits and pieces and scraps but I was thinking some of these might look great on here oh you know I was looking for that the other day some of these are from making the cards and other little things so let's get let's get some of this covered um let's use what kind of glue should we use let's just use matte medium uh no let's use gel I'd rather use gel because these papers are different weights and thicknesses so let's use gel medium and I know that'll stick it on you could use elmers if that's what you have let's try to get it on there semi-street oh that's as straight as it's going to get now you don't have to wrap it around necessarily and worry about the backside because it's going to be glued to that first page but I do I think want to wrap it around a little bit maybe but I think I want to put all the papers on there first that I want on there before I do any wrapping so let me do that and I will be right back okay so now we're going to put our covers on our little book I'm going to just use some scrapbookers glue this is by scotch I find this at target I actually really like this glue for just general paper crafting it's a good glue I'm going to be a tad on the generous side because I want it to stick well of course I made front and back covers that don't have any particular right or wrong direction I'm going to just center it on there okay I'm going to do the same thing to the other end but before we do I think I want to put a little piece of string in there yeah I don't want to put string Kathy'd ever put string I have another idea so we'll just glue the cover on you could put a little ribbon in here to tie it like up with I'm still thinking I want to do that okay hang on let me find some string I'll be right back okay I found this little piece of twine that was from my friend Michelle Mitchell I think when she sent me some happy happy mail recently and so I'm going to sandwich this between the watercolor paper and the other cover other side of the cover so first we're going to put our glue on here again being a little on the generous side then I'm going to sandwich my going to stick my string in the glue and then I want to put some more glue right on the string and I'm going to put my other cover a little around a bit and now we need to put it under something heavy and let it dry and then I can be back we can be back and I will show you our micro mini portable watercolor kit you ready all right I'll be right back okay so here we go so here is our micro mini watercolor travel kit I can't even believe this worked out the way it did so here's our finished little journal and it measures about two and an eighth by two and five eighths it has a string on it so that you can tie it shut lots of little pages to just do little you know practice little you know little small pieces of work something just real quick while you're you know at Starbucks having a cup of coffee and just wrapping around tie it off I probably could have put a button on here but I don't have one on there I might glue one on later we'll see but for right now I can just tie it and that works fine as long as I don't tie it in a knot that works fine and then this clear box I found again in my stash of stuff in the garage this is from target and I bought some of these large binder clips in it they come in these clear plastic boxes I you know always like they're great for organizing things when you use up the binder clips anyway so the pencil and the brush fit in here the little the little paint palette fits in here a little piece of paper toweling fits in here the whole thing shuts yeah and it's just you know this that's easy to fit in your in your handbag I mean you know honestly small convenient easy and the whole thing is not that big this is my you know daily sketch bag and you know I do have one bulky thing in here my phone um phone holder in case I'm like out somewhere and I want to like uh periscope or record it um with my phone but this whole thing fits in here it's not very big so it fits in here really nicely and this still it fits in here in it you know I don't want to tilt it too much because the paint is wet but it'll fit in there really well and or this is going to fit really nicely in my handbag um so there you have it I'm going to just leave that out it's got to sit out for a couple of days and dry but micro mini travel kit you know if you have a really small um if you want to just carry that around um you could put those two things in a plastic uh I'm sorry canvas bag like this I got this hobby lobby it's got my miniature colored pencils in it that would fit in here really nicely I would still keep these bits in the plastic box because in case the water brush um you know the plug comes out or the paints dribble out anywhere the box is extra protection against things dribbling out into your handbag but that aside I think this is fabulous I can't believe I did it um yeah wow and if I had made the journal even smaller it would actually fit in the box with everything else um but I don't know that I would have wanted to make it a whole lot smaller you actually if you could make it a little bit bigger the box measures oh yeah yeah three and three eighths by like four and an eighth if you made it a little bit bigger and and skinnier then it you could just rubber band it to the box that would work too so anyway there's some more ideas for you know micro mini travel watercolor kit all right have a great day everybody don't forget to go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later