Hi friends! Are you a neat freak like me? If you want to keep all your paint swatches in one album, this Painter’s Color Diary review will show you whether it is worth the price.
What It Is:
Painter’s Color Diary (Travel Size) is a handy reference record of your paint swatches, all in one place.
Moreover, it comes in more than one sizes, and the one I review here measures 6″x8″. For US$11.99 you get 10 removable sheets with glassine in between.
Furthermore, each of the swatch sheets has 100% cotton cold pressed, 140lb paper.
Swatching In Action
I just purchased 4 more shades of Rosa Gallery watercolour, and I decided to put all 12 shades on the first page.
By the way, the original swatch card on the left is not cotton, and you can see how much brighter the swatches are in the color diary.
Also, I swatched using the left side of each box for more concentrated paint, watering it down a bit on the right.
In addition, the quality of the paper in this diary impressed me. It is thick and behaves like a good quality 100% cotton paper should.
One Con…
I was, however, disappointed that the swatch boxes (36 per page) only printed on one side, instead of both sides. It felt very wasteful to me that a thick paper like this didn’t get the double sided printing to maximize how much you can swatch. Since the diary contains only 10 pages, it would have been nice if the printing was on both sides. A missed opportunity, and something that could have made this much more worth the US$11.99 price tag.
Do You Really Need This?
I do my own swatch cards of every brand I have, and put them all in a clear folder. If you already have that system going, you probably don’t need this. Don’t get me wrong, this is nice to be super organized into one small book; however, without the double-side printing, I felt this was not a must-have.
Alternatively, you can also purchase a PDF file of swatch cards on Etsy for pocket change, and print on any watercolour paper of your choice too. Of course, you can design your own too!
Overall Painter’s Color Diary Review
For US$11.99, this is not a bad deal, and it has 100% cotton paper. It’s a handy and organized way of keeping track of your paint swatches. I would recommend it if you don’t already have a system going, but you can skip this if you already do.
