For the Fun of It - a review of the etchr mini palette

a bonkers use case for the smallest of spaces

Jul 21, 2024

Hey everyone! It’s my last week with Film2Future so things are still busy-busy. I hope you’ve been enjoying your summer, whether you’ve gotten one of the heat waves or the IT-mageddon trapped you.

Today I wanted to talk about watercolor samples, and a recent palette (the etchr mini!) I made from them!

I’d been eyeing the Etchr palette for a long time, but sprung for it because I love to be able to rearrange my watercolors in their boxes. Etchr makes great watercolor sketchbooks, and carrying cases and all sorts of stuff. The Etchr palette is a travel set of two porcelain palettes, designed by watercolor artist Stephanie Law (you will probably recognize her work as she’s pretty beloved, I have a tarot deck with her art!). There’s a 19 well version, and a 37 well version. A lot of reviews mention- why so many little slots!! What is the point!!! (Also, PS- you can get the palette for about 30$ on Jacksons and other art stores!)

WELL I’m about to show you the perfect use case, for me at least!

I got in an order of some gorgeous handmade watercolors last week (I’ll do a little overview of handmade watercolors in a future column!). It came with samples of other colors on little paper cards.

I’ve gotten these samples in the past from Beam Paints, and also have two sets of Daniel Smith’s Dot Cards. These samples have proven great in the past in a pinch- they’re a way to try out a lot of different colors and types of paints.

But they also sort of languished in my watercolor box. When I go out to paint, or reach for my palettes at home, I don’t want to deal with the fiddly nature of many different cards.

So I made swatches, and carefully laid out where I wanted my colors in my etch palette, and peeled off the samples. Each sample fits really well into the etchr case- enough for almost all of my dot samples! As I laid each sample in, I re-hydrated them with some water so they would dissolve and fit neatly.

And now I have a travel set with a pretty banger line up of colors.

Now, getting the samples off was FIDDLY and also there’s a bit of paper in nearly every well, but it’s enough to work with, and going forward, as I finish each well, I can swap them out with more samples (or even tube paints, which is their usual purpose).