As much as I enjoy my Koi watercolors, the box is just too big for a small bag. I thought about going down to the 12-color version, but wanted something that would go almost anywhere. Even a pocket!

I knew there was at least one Altoids tin around the house, and it would probably make a decent everyday carry kit. A few searches for “altoids watercolor” and I had a pretty good idea of what would fit.

The next step was to gather up paint and a brush.

First I trimmed the foam to fit around the pans. The small piece can go on top of the paints, if you want. The foam really works well for wiping the waterbrush. If it gets too messy, rinsing under warm water cleans it right up.

I’ll eventually get around to painting the inside of the lid white. I don’t feel like buying a can of spray paint just for this one little thing. With luck a friend might have a can I borrow.

The Lukas paints are of indeterminate quality. The reviews on Jerry’s Artarama site are glowing to a fault. Out on the wider ‘net2 not so much. I used them because out of the three art supply stores near me, Lukas was the only brand sold in pans. I could of got empty pans and filled them, but for five colors plus pans it would have cost me almost $60 to test this out. That was more than I wanted to pay for this experiment. Now I have pans set up to go, and I can fill them with any paint in the future.

I also prepared some test strips to see just how lightfast the Lukas colors I have are. I’ll be writing about that soon.

If I build another, I’ll be skipping the magnets. The magnet tape was only a dollar because I used a 40% off coupon at Michael’s. It wasn’t worth the trip to return it. So I used it.

Since there’s room, I’ll probably toss in a short pencil and a small chunk of a kneaded eraser. The eraser can also be used as to prop the Altoids lid up so it’ll be flat.

Overall, it worked out nicely. My bag is much less bulky and feels quite a bit lighter. Most importantly, I don’t have to carry anything else to paint. I’ll call this one a win.