Paper Painters - Don't Throw Your Paint (Money) Down The Drain

If any of you ever use paint for your art projects I'm sure you can relate to the feeling you get when you go to clean out your brushes and you see all of your beautiful, expensive, paint pigment, come gushing off your brush into your water that you later pour down your drain.  Especially that first wash, when your water is nice and clean and you see it turn Manganese Blue or Phthalo Green.  I hate that!! 

I use painted paper in my artwork; so, I decided to put the paint that was still in my brush/sponge to good use. I made up this little box that sits on my studio table.

In the box is all the papers I normally paint for the collages I make - deli paper, a cookbook, an old dictionary, sheet music, an atlas, a ledger, and art papers/scrapbook papers.  

Now, when I am working on the background for a piece and I have paint in my brush, I don't wash my brush right away.  I reach over and pull a piece of paper out of my paper box and lay down a base coat with the left over paint in my brush.  If I am using a sponge, I can grab a stamp or a stencil and put down some texture onto another piece of paper. If I am using markers or oil pastels or ink, I can take a few minutes and add to my papers that already have some paint and texture on them. 

Not only am I saving money, I am saving the time I used to use to paint paper.  Win - Win!