Have Paints Will Travel - Part II

Among famous traitors of history one might mention the weather.
                                                                                      ~ Ilka Chase

Safety Tip: Wait to cut and glue the wine corks in place until you've sufficiently recovered from the wine.

At the end of the last post, I was contemplating the need to drink 4 bottles of wine. (I know, I know; you all feel very sorry for me.) The resulting 4 corks would be perfect for holding up the palette insert in my DIY pochade box. However, the idea of this DIY project* was to keep costs down and 4 bottles of wine could get a little spendy. Luckily friends of ours (who also happen to have excellent taste in wine) decided to throw a dinner party just in the nick of time and I was able to procure the 4 corks without undue strain on my budget or my health.

Through this project, I also discovered that you can use sandpaper on wine corks - even the synthetic ones - to smooth them down to a nice level surface.

I had a local glass company cut a piece of plexiglass to size, with a little notch in the corner for easy removal. The plexiglass sits on top of the 4 corks...

Shameless product placement.

...leaving just enough room underneath to store my tubes of paint, or a spare canvas panel.

Ready to go!

I added some Velcro dots to the inside lid of the box, and then corresponding dots to the back of my canvas panels to keep the panels in place while painting. I also used an S hook suspended from the notch in the plexiglass to hang my solvents from. Now I was ready to get out and paint on location!

Winter's not over 'til it's over.

However, the weather had other ideas. A wet messy snow was falling and the ground was muddy and I gave it up for another day.

* For more ideas on DIY pochade boxes, check out this inspirational round-up of designs on James Gurney's great blog "Gurney Journey".