Hello and welcome to The Craft Room Podcast. I’m so glad you’re joining me today, as we are talking about the benefits of swatching. Yes, I am on a swatching kick right now and it all started thanks to my friend Sally. I went to visit her last month and she showed me her beautifully organised craft supplies, but more importantly she showed me her ink pad swatches. I knew the second I saw it that this was the solution I had been looking for for years. It’s not like I’ve never swatched before. My Copic markers are swatched out on a hex chart, I’ve swatched some pencils and a watercolour palette. But I didn’t have what I have always wanted … a swatch folder with all the colours in one place. Sally has given me permission to share the photo that I took that day (see below). When you look at that picture you will notice that I have written over the photo (which I did immediately in my phone which is not pretty, but it is functional) … coins. Sally uses coin collecting sleeves for her swatches and this solved a huge problem for me. I’ve been reluctant to do a full swatching system because none of them were quite right. Until I saw Sally’s I didn’t know why I was baulking at it, and the reality is … I wanted more swatches to a page. It’s not like a plastic sleeve with pockets is a revolutionary product, but I’d never seen coin collecting sleeves used for swatching before. You can bet your bottom dollar that I went home and immediately went online looking for the same sleeves, found them and bought them. I will link to the ones that I got on Australian Amazon and US Amazon for those in the USA. I bought a pack of 15 sleeves for $15.99, each sleeve has 42 pockets, totalling 630 pockets. The pockets are sufficiently sized for a functional swatch, and more pockets per page means less pages required, which has three serious benefits for me. I can see more colours per page, and I don’t need as many pages, which is both a great space saver and money saver. I did the math … each pocket is 2.5c!
There are lots of reasons to swatch, and there are lots of different craft supplies you can swatch. My personal swatching mission revolves around my papercrafting supplies, although I do think I can extend to one other craft. A bit later I will talk more about the age old question, posed to us by Shakespeare himself … “To Swatch or not to Swatch? That is the question”. But first of all I want to talk to you about the seven benefits I have noticed just in the last few weeks from making my swatches, and we can start with
Benefit 1 – Accurate Colors.
Sometimes with our products … our markers, a watercolour palette, an ink pad, a little pot of colour … the insides don’t match the outsides. I noticed this most pointedly with some Jasart pencils that I swatched out when I was a Jasart Brand Ambassador. The first thing I did when I received the pencils was to stamp a cute little bird and colour it, but I was unhappy with the end result, and couldn’t quite put my finger on why. At the time I was making loads of short videos, so I decided to record the swatching process for a TikTok, and I noticed that the colour on my paper, for some pencils, was quite different to the wrap around the outside of the pencil. That was when I really recognised that swatching was not just fun and pretty … it was useful. I like to say that disappointment comes from unmet expectations, and that pretty wrap around the pencil told me it was going to be one colour, but what came out was very different. That’s why I was disappointed with that coloured bird stamp.
The other thing I mean about accurate colours is that sometimes our colours are going to look different on a different base. Consider that when you are used to colouring on bright white cardstock, you know how the colours will look, but if you switch to an off white, cream or even something like a pastel blue or even kraft, the colours will look different because of the base. In the case of markers, inks, sprays, paint and watercolour, they can look quite different wet than they do when they dry. So swatching everything out means that what you put down on your swatch card is going to show you what is inside the product and how it looks when it’s dry.
Benefit 2 – Know What you Have
I didn’t think I was going to fill all 630 pockets with swatch cards, but it looks like I might have been wrong about that. I had no idea how many ink pads I owned. I have a lot of ink cubes. They’re small, they don’t take up a lot of space, so it’s deceiving how many I actually own! Now that they’re all swatched out, I have a better sense of how many ink pads I have. In my current organisational system, I have ink pads stored in 4 different receptacles in my office. They’re all within reach of my desk, but until I started my swatching project, I hadn’t really considered that they could take up less space if I made some adjustments to my current storage.
The swatching process also helped me identify some accidental double-ups. Last year, when Ranger announced the release of Distress Oxide minis, I bought the entire first release. I haven’t bought any more, because, honestly, all of my favourite colours were in that first release. And do you know how I know they were my favourite colours? Because when I was swatching, I discovered I had five of them in full sized ink pads already. I prefer the minis, so I am going to move those full sized oxide ink pads onto a new home so they can make someone else happy.
Swatching can also help you find gaps in your colour collection. Once you’ve swatched out all of your ink pads, or watercolour palettes, or pencils, or markers … whatever it you’re swatching … you can lay out your swatches in colour order and see what you have. You can also see what you don’t have. Maybe you’re missing that really nice shade of mauve that you like, or that perfect chartreuse or dark chocolate brown. This is incredibly helpful when you are shopping for craft supplies moving forward, because you can see what you already have, and what is missing, then shop specifically to fill those gaps in your collection.
Benefit 3 – Quick Choices while Crafting
I have only had these swatches done for about 2 and a half weeks, and it’s already made a massive difference to how quickly I can choose the colours and products I’m going to use when I’m sitting down to craft.
Over the weekend I started working on a new One Sheet Wonder template, and a couple of days ago I did a test run (it still needs some tweaking, but I’ll get there!). I used as many pre-coloured images as I could, but I needed to colour images to go with some of the cards. I knew which stamps I wanted to use, but choosing the colours is where the swatches really showed me that the time I’d spent creating them was a great investment. Normally I would look at all my colouring options, and while Copic markers are easy (they’re sitting directly in front of me on my desk), my ink pads are in four different containers on 2 different shelving units, my watercolours & pencils are tucked away at the back of my office, and while it’s a very small space, I have literally hundreds of options. Looking through them all takes time, and makes a mess! It was so much faster to flip through the swatches, find the colours that worked, then go get the product. This leads me nicely to …
Benefit 4 – Making Educated Decisions
To decorate some of the One Sheet Wonder test cards, I had a specific stamp in mind for a card I want to send to a friend who’s having a rough time right now. It’s a Purple Onion stamp, featuring an elephant and his little monkey friend, and I wanted to match the grey of my elephant specifically to a shade of grey on my pattern paper. It’s kind of a brown-ish grey (or a grey-ish brown), and while it’s not necessarily a technically correct elephant colour, it’s not a photo realistic elephant stamp, so I’m leaning ever so lightly into the whimsy of it. I doubt very much you would be surprised to learn that I have a LOT of colouring mediums, so my swatches are plentiful, and I quickly found two options. The first was Copic warm Greys, and the second was a specific colour in a Jasart watercolour palette. Either of them would have been perfect.
This is kind of a big elephant, with a lot of open space. To colour it using Copic markers would take a lot of time and effort to place shadows & highlights and get a perfect blend. Watercolour would be quick and slightly chaotic, but whimsical. Here’s where my swatches helped me to make two educated decisions.
1. For the past week I’ve had quite low energy levels. When you’re a chronic illness craft girly faced with the option of Copic colouring that would take close to an hour, or watercolour that would take less than 5 minutes, the decision is clear. I chose watercolour, and I have to say, I love the results (see pic below).
2. Figuring out the medium first, meant I knew exactly which ink pad and cardstock I needed to stamp my elephant. If I’m colouring with watercolour, I’m stamping with Ranger Archival Jet Black ink onto watercolour paper. I didn’t waste time and resources stamping with the wrong ink onto the wrong cardstock.
Another place that swatches can help you make educated decisions is when you are shopping for craft supplies. If you’re heading to your local craft store, a craft show or jumping online for a little retail therapy, it’s easy to take your swatch binder with you. When you’re perusing that end-of-day show ink pad special, you can refer to your binder, and make sure you’re not doubling up on a colour you already own. Now, when you do buy a new colour, you don’t have to rely on your memory, because your swatches are right there, helping you make an educated decision about your purchase (and think of the money you’ll save not buying accidental doubles, not to mention those feelings of guilt or shame or frustration that accompanies it). This actually leads us very nicely, again, to …
Benefit 5 – Reducing Decision Fatigue
Decision fatigue is one of those things that you might have experienced if you’ve ever been on a decluttering mission. Every tiny thing you pick up demands a decision … do I keep it, throw it away, donate it? Crafting can be the same if you have too many craft supplies. Yes, I know you might be thinking “Dawn, are you alright? What do you mean … ‘too many craft supplies’?” Look … it can happen. It really can happen. Sometimes when you have too many choices you get decision paralysis and end up getting nothing done at all. Sometimes less stuff makes it easier to choose. I’m staring at a mountain of 12×12 pattern paper, which I am determined to whittle down this year. Choosing which paper to use was already a hurdle, but choosing colours … that’s a whole other thing! Placing the paper or cardstock over my swatch pages and moving them around until I find colours that look good is already reducing that decision fatigue.
Benefit 6 – Viewing Variations
I look at the swatching process, kind of like a job review for my ink pads, watercolours and markers. What can you do? Where do your strengths lie? What are your weaknesses? When I swatch a product, I get to see its range. For example, when I swatch an ink pad I can see how it blends, from straight off the ink pad out to a lighter application. The same goes for watercolours. I can see it applied heavily with very little water, right out to a lighter application with lots of water. When it shows me what it can do, that helps me choose.
Benefit 7 – Get more use from your Supplies
This is the year I want to get serious about using my craft supplies, so I’m going to be saying this a lot … you can’t use it if you don’t know you have it. I had ink pads I’d forgotten about. After swatching all of my watercolour products, I realised that I have a tin of Inktense watercolour pencils languishing in my paint cupboard that I’ve never used, so now I’ll need to swatch those and reorganise the watercolour category. I had also forgotten that I have ink sprays, glitter gels and a bunch of cool paints and mediums, so they need to be swatched and added to my binder. This will remind me that they exist, which increases the likelihood that I will use them.
I’m already using things more. Like I said, it’s been less than 3 weeks since I did this big swatch-out, and I’m already using more ink pads! I made a dozen cards a couple of days ago, and I used more coloured ink pads to stamp sentiments than I have used in YEARS! That watercolour palette I used to paint the elephant … I haven’t touched it since 2021! Having the swatch, with all those colours and information in one condensed volume means that my colour options are no longer out of sight, out of mind.
So … what else can I tell you about the benefits of swatching?
Well, you can keep it simple, or get a bit more complex. My swatches identify the brand and colour name, and are organised by medium, and I’ve just swatched individual colours. However, I did make some extra swatches for Copic colour blending, and I plan to add some Distress Ink blend cards when I have the time and inclination.
This swatch binder is going to be a work in progress. Eventually there will be products I use up, like a Zig Clean Colour brush tip marker, which is not refillable. Once I use up the last of the ink inside the marker, I’ll need to throw it away, and remove the swatch from the binder. Similarly, if a new product comes into my collection, it needs to be swatched and added to the binder. It’s like a constantly evolving project.
In my binder I have 4 main categories right now. Ink pads, watercolours, pencils and alcohol markers. I will be adding a section for paints, and probably another for mediums, like sprays, glitter gels, metallic pastes and embossing powders. And when I say they’re going in a binder, I mean that I will literally place them into a binder. One of my least favourite things about my Copic hex chart is that having it on display on my wall means it fades, and I have to re-do the whole thing every 2 years or so for accurate colour representation. I mean, I love having it on display, but having it in the binder means I won’t have to waste time and ink ever again.
Earlier I mentioned that we’d talk about the age old conundrum … ‘To swatch or not to swatch?’, which is a really good question, and thank you William Shakespeare for asking that. Sometimes you benefit from swatching, and sometimes you don’t, and swatching requires a significant time investment. The swatches that I’ve already made took up the majority of my time for 3 days, so in order to answer the first question, we must ask another.
Do the benefits of making these swatches outweigh the time investment?
When it comes to the products I’ve swatched out so far … ink pads, pencils, watercolours, embossing powders, Copics … the answer is yes. Yes! The time absolutely was worth investing in swatching because I have already experienced a saving in time and energy, with reduced decision fatigue, and I will continue to experience those benefits moving forward. So, for me, the time I spent swatching was incredibly worthwhile.
You know what would not be a good use of my time to swatch? My amigurumi crochet yarns. I already invested quite a bit of time in a spreadsheet that includes a colour sample, because I found it helpful when placing Hobbii orders. However, Hobbii no longer ships to Australia, so I no longer need to refer to the spreadsheet for inventory purposes (although, I do refer to the column I added that tells me which is the equivalent colour used in a range of patterns I enjoy from Aradiya Toys). Creating swatch cards for every single colour, taking out every skein, cutting a length from each, adding it to the cards, then putting the yarn back would be a colossal waste of time, and that’s because of the way the yarn is stored. If I want to see all the colours I have, I just have to open a cupboard door and there they are … stored in colour order, which is good enough for me.
Similarly, it’s not worth the time to swatch my DMC embroidery threads. I invested time into winding every colour onto a cardboard bobbin (which I guess is kind of like swatching), and storing in numeric order. All I have to do is open the 3 containers and I can see all the colours I have.
The last one is fabric. The only exception I would make is if I was totally obsessed with foundation paper piecing, and had a huge amount of solid colour homespun. And as much as I desperately want to give that a try, right now my fabric stash doesn’t warrant swatching.
How you decide if you are going to swatch your craft supplies depends heavily on how you use them, and how you store them. So yes, yarn, thread and fabric swatches would be pretty, but a total waste of time because of the way I store them and use them. But there are other considerations for the supplies that I won’t be swatching. When it comes to yarn, embroidery thread and fabric, what you see is what you get. No matter how I use it, it will always look the same, whereas an ink pad or watercolour can change depending on the method of application and the colour of the paper or cardstock you’re using. Also, yarn, thread and fabric are consumables, not something designed to be used over and over again. Yes, the ink pads and markers will eventually run dry, but many can be re-inked. And while I can’t refill a watercolour palette or pot, a little goes a very long way, so they will last for many, many years.
That said, if you look at your craft supplies, and consider how you use them, and how you store them, and you decide that swatching would be beneficial to you, then absolutely go for it. When it comes to swatching, there is no right or wrong, only what’s right for you. So if you store and use your crafting materials in a way that has you thinking “You know what, if I had a binder with all those colour references in it, this would be so much easier” go for it. Do it! Find a system that makes things easier, and makes you happy.
I also mentioned earlier that one of the ways that I did my swatching was like a job review. I have a whole theory about this, but I think that is going to need to be its own episode. And, as much as I would love to go into loads of details right now, telling you how I did the swatching, and why I swatched that way, it’s a very visual explanation, and podcasts aren’t exactly a visual thing. So here’s what I’m going to do instead. I have scheduled a livestream on my YouTube channel on Friday 20th February 2026 at 8:30pm Sydney time. Remember that I am in Australia, and right now we’re in daylight savings time, so that’s AEDT (Check out this timezone converter so you can figure out when that will be in your local time). I will also link to the scheduled live on YouTube. There’s a button you can click to be notified at the scheduled start time, but it’s helpful to note that notification will be sent as an email, so you might prefer to pop a reminder into your calendar with the link.
I knew I wanted to do livestreaming this year, but have been waiting until I could do it “properly”. Yesterday I decided to take my own advice that done is better than perfect, so even though I don’t have all my technical ducks in a row, I’m going to do it anyway! If you’re able to join me on the live, I would be so thrilled to see you there. I’m going to demonstrate how I swatched out different mediums, and explain why I’ve done it that way. If you have swatching questions or stories, I would love you to bring them with you! If you’ve found this podcast episode after the day I go live, it will still be available to watch on my YouTube channel, and I do check for questions and comments daily. We are also talking a lot about swatching and choosing colours over in the Craft with Dawn Lewis Facebook group. I started the group last month for crafters who want to dial back their accumulation and start using the cool craft supplies they already have, and it’s a fun place to hang out. If that sounds interesting to you, I’ll pop a link in the show notes and blog post so you can come and join us (and remind you to please answer the 3 questions when joining, so I can approve your membership quickly). If, however, Facebook is not your cup of tea, then you don’t have to miss out. I’ll be showcasing more of my swatching adventures on other socials … Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest. And if you would like it all distilled down into one juicy bite, you can subscribe to my email newsletter, where I’ll be sending just 2 emails per month. At the beginning of the month, I’ll point you toward the new podcast episode and maybe a YouTube video if that’s gone live, and a bit of a wrap-up at the end of the month with hints, tips, resources and revelations we’ve had in the Craft with Dawn Lewis Facebook group. So, just a couple of emails, packed with what you will hopefully find to be helpful for your crafting.
This year we are using our craft supplies, we’re not being Pinterest perfect about it, and all of my content will be centred around that. So, until we meet again, happy crafting, happy swatching, and I hope to see you on my YouTube livestream … until I see you next time.
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