inexpensive paint palette for acrylics

Artist stuff can end up costing one an arm and a leg. It's not cheap being an artist. As a newby and retired I'm always trying to save a buck or two. I was using plastic and foam plates for my palettes but often times there just wasn't enough room on one plate and had to use several for what I'm doing. They just took too much space already in a cramped area I'm working in. I decided to make my own palette, customized for me. It had to be lightweight and made from inexpensive material. It also had to last for at least a couple of paintings.

I bought couple of pieces of foam board (poster board with foam center), the stuff you can find almost anywhere that caries office supplies. I got mine at Dollar Tree. The boards were 20" x 30" and cost me a mere $1.00 each.

poster board with foam center

From the 2 boards I was able to make 4 15"x20" palettes large enough to handle plenty of paint by cutting each board in half.

poster board with foam sandwich

They are easy to cut-simply with scissors to your own custom fit. The thumb hole, I used a 1 1/2" hole saw added to my cordless drill. I could have just cut out a hole using a utility knife. Using my cordless and the hole saw made quick work out of it and a perfect hole to boot. The corners were rounded off using scissors. What I couldn't cut with my scissors, I used my utility knife.

Because the top layers on the boards are very thin, putting any kind of sealer on them will make the top layer come off and the palate will become too flexible, altho the foam will handle the paint easily. Just go ahead and use the new palate as is without a sealer. It'll work just fine. When I can't remove anymore paint off it, I just throw it away and grab another I had made earlier.

Here is a pic of one I've been using. I made it so that I can use both sides when I need to.

my first foam board paint palette

Here are a couple of other styles I also made for myself. The thumb hole was cut out for a distance comfortable for me.

foam board palette

foam board palette I made

 I decided to take this project a bit further and make one out of 3/16" luaun plywood. I went to my local lumber store and got me a piece of luaun 24"X24" . I drew out how I wanted it on the board and then cut it with a jig saw. It came out 16" x 22". A standard size would be about 16" x 20 1/2". Next I sanded all the corners with coarse sandpaper and then filed areas I couldn't get in with my sand paper block. I also took some steel wool size 000 to the top of it to smooth out. Once I got it cleaned off, I took some clear gloss oil base spray paint to both sides and let it dry. The paint has primer included. On the face of the palette I put about 4 coats and on the back side 2. The sides also got the clear coat. Here's what it looks like after I got it completed. It wouldn't hurt to use the steel wool before each coat for a smooth finish.

wood paint palette I made from luaun

paint I used to seal my wood palate

For added protection so that the acrylic paints won't dry onto my palette, I rub on some wax, any wax just to put something between the paint and my palette. Now it's ez to clean the palette for my next painting. All in all, the wood palette cost me a total of $15.00, if that to make. To buy one, I've seen them go for over $40.00.

an omen perhaps

So my fishing buddy and I decided to go on a one day fishing trip to Michigan. When I called him that morning to let him know I was on my way to his house, I just had this strange feeling that it wasn't going to be just another fishing trip. He was running late and asked me to wait ten minutes before coming over. Well I was already on my way so I decided to kill some time and take the long route. Of course when I got there he wasn't even close to being ready but at least his boat was hitched up to his mini van. About an hour later we finally got on the road. As we were headed down the road, I wanted to open my side window. Nothing happened, power windows, okay maybe the switch was bad. My buddy tried the switch on his side, didn't work either. It had to have worked earlier since his side was open. We tried all the switches, nothing, none of them seem to work, maybe blown fuse? We just kept going. Maybe some music was in order so let's try putting on the radio. Nope, didn't work either. That's weird. none of the electrics inside seemed to be working. The turn signals and brake lights are fine and so was the window wipers. The a/c worked so what's going on we wondered.

About an hour and a half of driving, we got into Michigan and decided to make a pit stop at the welcome center just on the other side of the state border. Things seemed okay and after the pit stop, we were on our merry way looking forwards to getting to our fishing spot. We still had another hours drive to the lake and traffic was pretty bad especially with road work. We were surrounded by semi's and trying to keep up with traffic at 65 mph. The next thing we hear was a loud thump and the mini van became hard to control. I looked behind us and noticed that the boat trailer had gotten loose and was no longer hooked up to the van. Sparks were flying everywhere as the front of the trailer was scraping asphalt at high speed. Oh SHIT I yelled out and then mu buddy saw what was going down. Truck in front of us, trucks to the right of us, a truck behind us and a barricade on the left. What to do? Start slowing down before things get real ugly. The trailer slammed into the van several as we slowed down. Thank goodness the trailer was still hooked up by the chains. Plenty of sparks flying everywhere. The truckers saw what was up and fortunately moved out of our way giving us plenty of space to get to the right shoulder. In the meantime the trailer kept slamming into the back of the van as we slowed down probably doing some serious damage back there. But our only goal was to get out of the way of these semi's and hope that there aren't any pot holes on the road. If the tongue of the trailer gets into a pot hole which was evident in the area from what I saw during a previous drive, the entire trailer with the boat on it could have flipped forward at the speed we were going. We could have been killed right then and there. My buddy was trembling, I was calm as I gave him directions on what to do. I didn't have time to be scared.

We finally got over to the curb in one piece and as the van came to a stop, I jumped out to see what we were into. My buddy who had been driving,still trembling, sat there for a while trying to chill down a bit. Yeah it was a hell of a ride. His 2O+grand boat was okay but the trailer showed  some damage. Nothing which prevented us from moving on, that's if, we could get the trailer hooked back up onto the van. The power wench for his boat was pretty damaged and we didn't know whether it was usable at all. The wiring harness which controlled all of the lights on the trailer was shot. Maybe I could fix that. The first thing we needed to do was to get the trailer hooked up. But it was way too heavy for even two old farts trying to lift it, so maybe his car jack would help. It was pretty tight under there but he somehow managed to get it to a spot and he started jacking it up. Well the first thing came into my mind was that the trailer was going to start rolling down the hill we on, without something behind the trailer tires. Luckily I found some pieces of wood and shoved them behind both tires as traffic flew by us. The only thing separating us was a white line. We couldn't get any further to the right due to another barrier so we were just a couple of feet from moving traffic, high speed that is.

After jacking the trailer high enough,we were able to rotate the trailer jack down which was on the side of the trailer and got her hooked up. It took me a bit of doing to repair the wire harness and make sure that all lights were firing up as needed. Another hour and a half was spent doing so and we were finally back on the road. We finally got to the lake and talked about how we were going to get the boat back on the trailer since the wench was just about destroyed. I noticed that the two wires red and black were just hanging there and began to wonder. Does it still crank, the motor on it didn't look cashed in? I did some clever wiring from a battery to the two wires and to my amazement it worked. Okay so now we are back in business. But alas, as my buddy went over to the boat motor to raise it and take out a support under it, there was no power. The damn battery is dead. Maybe we can jump it using the trolling motor batteries, so out came the jumper cables. But no luck there. Well, we could just use the trolling motor my buddy says as the winds started to pick up. But the batteries aren't fully charged and if they die out, how are we going to get back, by oar? No, that you left at home.

At this point in time our hopes of getting any fishing in was useless as the day was nearing to the end. Our best bet was to head on home, stop for some lunch/dinner, have a few drinks and call it a day. We did that. But wouldn't you know it, the windows and the rest of the electrics in the van now worked without any problems.