Acrylic Paint Organization - An Art Room Project

It started with a messy pile of paints....okay, a couple of messy bins of paints.  I could stand it no longer, Half my paints were dried up or half-empty, the others were just hard to get to.  So I had an idea while I was working with a circle punch on some necklaces.  I noticed the circle fit just right on top of my craft paint bottles, and I decided to use these little circles to organize my junk!  Here's my paint mess before.

Not bad, but not organized either. As you can see, I'm not real particular about paints, specifically using expensive paints, I just love color!  Most of my paints are made by Plaid, either FolkArt or Apple Barrel.  They have awesome colors and are inexpensive and easy for me to find locally.  Plus Plaid has a really awesome Pay for Publication program and if I happen to get a how-to piece published I can get some reimbursement for using their products.   I also like Amsterdam paints, they are a bit more pricey, but are still within range and are really creamy with vibrant colors.

Anyway, I have a bunch of colors, so I really had to dig to get anything out of my bin, and it was just hard to find the color I wanted.  Once upon a time I had my paints organized.  But when I got more paints things got a bit jumbled up.  My hubby found this awesome shelf at a yard sale, and I want to use it to store my paints.

My first step to organize this mess was to go through my paints and get out the half-empty bottles.  I have a bunch of these.  I put them in a separate bin so I can use them all up and get more.  

So when I had my paints organized all I could see about the paint was that the bottle told me.  Some bottles have a little circle on the top that shows the color of the paint, and I have also seen bottles turned around so you can see into the bottom of the bottle to see the color.  But that does not show me how the paint interacts with the canvas or with paper.

It's sort of like a guessing game.  I have even tried smearing a bit of paint on the top of the ones that don't have circles.  The circles show the color and it looks solid, I never really know what the paint will look like until I use it, and sometimes that is a bit too late.  Nothing another layer can't fix though, but unnecessary.  So I had some Canson Acrylic Paper and decided to use it because it has a canvas texture and is bright white like the canvases I use.  This paper is 136 lbs and is perfect to work on if you are used to a canvas but don't really need the canvas frame.  

I used my Martha Stewart Crafts 1" Circle Craft Punch and punched several circles out.  

I found I could get more punches per page if I turned the tool over and viewed the punch from the back so I could line it up more precisely.  

When I got done with a row I would trim the paper down with a pair of scissors so I could make the next row.

  

My paper was 5.5" by 8.5" and I got about 40 per page.  I think I used 3 1/2  pages, so I punched just about 140 circles out.  I wanted two circle for each color, one for the tube and one for the color chart I made.  Some of the bottles are almost empty so I did not bother with two circles for those, just one for the color chart.  I'll make more when I get new bottles of those colors.

I worked in groups of 6-12, painting two circles for each color of paint at a time.  

I wrote on the back of one of each set so I could keep track of the color as I put it into my journal.  

Since I knew I would have extra paint, I got some scrap pages out and some canvases.  I ended up with several finished pages by the time I was done.  

It took a bit of time to set all this up, but I have a little time to myself on Saturdays and like to set up bigger projects like this then.

As the pieces dried, before I put the tubes up, I glued down the circles to the coordinating bottles with my little hot glue gun.  It was fast and not messy at all, and I didn't have to wait for glue to dry.

So now my tubes look nice and neat when they are stacked up on this shelf.  And it looks like I have room for more, so more shopping maybe?  I think so!

I also have a small collection of tube paints (which I hope to expand soon), and I went ahead and made some circles for them too.  

A close-up.  I love the texture of the canvas paper, and it really gives me a good idea of how the paint looks on a textured surface.  

When I got done with all of my full tubes, I worked on the tubes that were almost empty.  These went faster since I only had to do one for each color of paint.  I also wrote the colors on the back of these to keep from getting them mixed up.

I set them up in a sort of color spectrum order (with neutrals in from of the spectrum) and put them in a bag until I could finish.

I arranged the colors on the page like I wanted, leaving spaces to add more colors if I need to, and glued them down with Aleene's Tacky glue.  Sometimes this glue warps my papers, but I glued these to 140 lb watercolor paper and had no problems.  

Some are blank because I love the color of paint, but didn't have enough in my tube to paint the circle.  These were the dried up ones, they were some of the first paints I bought when I got my own room a few years back. 

Well, I'm organized now and don't really know what to do with myself.  I have a bunch of paint that I need to use up, the last few drops of probably 45 different colors, so I'll have some fun and messy stuff to share soon.  I also did a video flip through of the above book, you can watch it here on my YouTube channel.  

I'll have a post up soon on my new pieces, which were just pages from my journal I had used my extra paint on.  They ended up looking lovely, and look very similar like a little accidental series.