Monday 18 January 2010

Of Citadel paint pots - get rid of them

What I always really hated about Citadel colours is their impossibly awkward pots. I dilute my paints, and I like mixing them. And I hate wasting things. Don't get me wrong, it is not about being Scrooge, it is about control :-).


I have always wasted paint for drying, as the pots never really closed, and I hated taking paint out from them into the palette with  paper clips, stiks or whatever, guessing the right amount and wasting half of it.
The solution was obvious - especially after I started my ongoing shift towards Vallejo - Eyedropper bottles. They come dirt cheap in the local pharmacy, HUF 300 for a dosen - about €1.2 . Only thing I realized though - and I hate to admit that this is pretty useless outside Hungary - is that you have to ask for sterile ones, for plain ones come in white colour. If you want neat clear ones, go for sterile ones.
The rest is pretty straightforward, salvage all citadel paints still recoverable, dilute them with matte acrylic medium and distilled water to the right consistency and pour them into the eyedropper bottles. For this purpose instead of a small funnel I used a small slide made of a discarded plastic cup if anyone cares.
Finally I painted the tips of the caps in the corresponding colours, as I do with the Vallejo ones.
Actually I use much more Citadel paints ever since, and the pots are put to a much better use, with blue tack on top they make the perfect WIP figure holders.

9 comments:

  1. Nice switch. I'm going to have to look for similar bottles at the pharmacy here in the U.S. Hopefully the'll have something along the same lines.

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  2. this tip i love, ive wasted tons of euro's on dry paint so im heading over my local pharmacy to get me a dozen of these thx for the tip

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  3. Very nice... I've been trying to find cheap eye droppers in Canada, but haven't had any luck. Now I know what I should be paying I'll give it another go. Thanks.

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  4. I've pondered on this myself for a while, and reading this post has given me the incentive to get my finger out of my arse. So there are presently 30 eye-dropper bottles on their way to my house, some of them I'll use to make my own washes.

    Cheers man,

    -Draz.

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  5. How did you peal the labels off the paint pots to stick on your dropper bottles?

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  6. Slowly, applying even pressure and pause a sec after each 1-2s pull.

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  7. Just to let you know, with the new rumor of big changes coming for the paint line you pic has been floating around giving people heart attacks. Love the idea as I use droppers myself and have a special mix of paint additive I use too.

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