The DIY Deluxe Tiny Tin Guerrilla Paint Box
Over the years my friend and artist Lisa Kennedy has shared you tube videos of artists painting miniature painting demos using an Altoid mint box. We always talked about making one but never did until now!
This blog post will focus on how I created my DIY Deluxe Tiny Tin Guerilla Paint box 2.0… I upped the game if you will by taking into consideration some key practicalities of using the tin to create a miniature painting, that is why it is 2.0. For the success of this experiment, I will assume you will be wearing something that had pockets or are traversing with a small tote bag of some kind that will hold a few paper towels and perhaps some extra painting surfaces should you decide to paint more than one image. I’ve also designed this Deluxe Tiny Tin Guerilla Paint Box to easily fit in a large zip lock bag. Here is the list of materials I used to create my ‘deluxe’ Tiny Tin Paint box:
One box of Altoid mints (minus the mints)
Small bamboo cutting board
Small (as in miniature) jar of jam (minus the jam)
Paint brush
Velcro dots
Adhesive Photo corners
Painting medium of your choice
Painting surface such as gessoed paper, watercolor paper, or miniature canvas/Masonite board (I used the gessoed paper for my box.
The first thing I did was purchase some Altoid mints at the grocery store. I then emptied the box, giving the mints to my husband (why waste good mints)! While at the store I purchased a small bamboo cutting board. I remembered seeing a tiny jar of jam in our fridge that had to be close to a million years old, actually… it was a stocking stuffer from this past Christmas. I nabbed the jar and emptied it of its contents. Next, I headed to our local crafts store (Michaels) and purchased a small paint brush, Velcro circle tabs and adhesive corner tabs that are used to secure photographs in scrap books or photo albums. For the Velcro tabs you want to make sure you do not buy the iron-on version, you want the stick-on dots. I also picked up some scrap paper I had in my flat file which is in storage (my entire house is in storage, but we will save that for another time_. The paper strips, although long, looked to be the width of the Altoid box. Back at the apartment, I set about gessoing paper strips. I took one of the strips and cut it down to size so that it would easily fit inside the tin box.
Once I had my supplies gathered, I set to work assembling my ‘deluxe’ Tiny Tin Guerilla Paint Box. I emptied the tin and gave it a good washing. Next, I mapped out where everything would be placed on the bamboo cutting board. After that was done, I applied the Velcro dots to the board, the tin, jar, and paint brush. I used three dots to secure the paint tin (perhaps a little over kill but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere), one for the clean jam jar and I quartered the last dot length wise and attached it to the paint brush. To ensure the paper stayed in place I attached four of the adhesive corns to the inside lid of the Altoid box.
To make the cutting board more manageable while painting, I reach out to my friend Dean Goss to see if he had a jigsaw as mine, or rather Andy’s, was in storage (I wasn’t kidding… everything is in storage!) Using his saw, we cut a thumb size hole in the board. This extra step allowed me to hold the board as one would a wooden palette. I picked up some course and fine sandpaper at Home Depot and sanded what few rough edges there were to a smooth surface. This last step ensured that I would not get splinters while holding the board with my thumb.
With that my Deluxe Tiny Tin Guerilla Paint Box was complete! The next step… start painting!
For further information on how to create your own Altoid paint box, all you need to do is google, Altoid Paint Boxes and a whole list of videos will appear! But… why google outside sources when you have my entire process documented in this blog post! It is so easy to make and will be so much fun to paint on the go!
I hope you enjoyed my little DIY blog post – Happy Painting!
