Counting colours

I've been doing some Spring cleaning in my office. Perhaps that should be 'Winter cleaning' as Spring is still far away, judging by the weather. I'm taking the opportunity to sort my hobby tools out, so they are all in one place, and take stock of my modelling paints.

For storage, I've decided to use the Really Useful Boxes range, as I use them for much of my terrain and figure collection. For my main hobby box, I've purchased some tray inserts to store all my brushes and bases in a single box. It's not quite perfect - there are still some things I didn't have room for, such as glues, primers and epoxy putty.

More Really Useful boxes have been used to store my paints (these are the 4-litre boxes). The lid will just about close on the Vallejo paints and they work fine with the smaller paint bottles. It also has given me the opportunity to see how many old paints have dried up. Surprisingly, some paints I bought nearly 30 years ago are fine, while newer ones (notably Citadel and Revel Aqua Color) are now solid blocks of pigment. 

I've also started using an app on my phone called Paint Rack. It allows you to catalogue your paints and even has a cool barcode scanning option. It will be really useful in the future, as I can check if I have a specific paint already when I go shopping. As it happens, I found out I had repeats of at least four colours! The basic app is free and works on Android phones.

Maybe I should have really invested in a real paint rack, but I'm not yet convinced it'll make colours that easier to find. I usually get out the colours I need for a specific painting scheme while I'm using them. At least my office is now tidier! 🙂