Why and How to Make a Wet Palette

Acrylic paints, espcially thick kinds, such as the Citadel colours, dry very quickly. This isn't news to anyone who's done any significant amount of painting, but if you use a normal dry palette, you soon stop thinking about how much paint you end up wasting on the palette. The hobby is costly enough if as much as half of your paint ends up drying on a piece of cardboard/plastic/whatever without ever actually contributing to the paintjob.
I must have known about wet palettes longer, but hadn't really thought to make one until recently, and I have to say I feel silly for not having done it earlier.

 All it really is is a shallow plastic container or a tray, some paper towels and a piece of baker's parchment paper. Add water and you're done. I wanted to use a container with a lid, in case I make a larger project with which I have to use mixesd paints. If I stop painting for the night and close the lid, the paint will still be wet enough to paint with the next day, albeit thinned down. It would probably be even better if the container had some sort of seal around the edges when the lid is down, but this works well enough as it is.

The actual "assembly" involves placing the paper towels in the container, getting them wet and laying the parchment paper on top of them. The parchment paper is used as one would use a palette The paper towels will wick water through the parchment paper, keeping the paint from drying. The whole project costs around as much as one or two pots of Citadel's paints, depending on how fancy container you want to use.