Well, I thought I had it covered… I took my distress ink palette with me on holiday, intending to do some distress water colouring while I was away. I popped it in a bag with a piece of kitchen towel, sealed it up, placed in flat in a box, flat in the car boot and off we went. It seems that somewhere along the 4 hour drive to Holyhead, the ferry crossing to Ireland and 1.5 hours driving in Ireland there was sufficient rock and roll to slosh things about a bit:

Needless to say, I didn’t get any water colour done with this palette – I had to use my distress markers instead. I decided not to waste the lovely colours and used an adaptation of my paper towel printing technique to produce lots of lovely coloured napkins for backgrounds and decoupage:

I have several plies of the oranges, the blues and the greens ready for my collages and bits and bobs. After I’d rescued and used what I could, I set to washing up the mess and replacing the colour swatches on the lid. As you’d expect, all the inks rinsed off the plastic leaving no residues, unlike the stickers which left their adhesive behind – no matter, it just helps the next ones stick more! A couple of hours later, and my palette is restored:

A happy accident? Time will tell as I use up the various bits of kitchen paper I used to blot up the  mess in my artwork – watch this space! I would also like to find a thin sheet of silicone/rubber to seal the palette for the next trip – or thin one inch rubber washers to stick onto the lid. The palette is great, both in construction and price – but it sooo isn’t water tight! I’ve also learnt to only use half a dropper full of ink in each well rather than the full one I did first time round!