Pastel Organization / Packing a Heilman Box and MORE! 

I bought the supplies, watched tons of videos, joined your wonderful, encouraging FaceBook group, and I'm working on my first project! Thank you for being so VERY ENCOURAGING!!! God's blessings!

I have the Heilman backpack box, and you can have no fear of carrying even very soft pastels. I carry a mix of Unison, Schminke, and Terry Ludwigs. I have found that as long as you do not pack your pastels tight against the wood sides you are well protected short of actually dropping the box. Mine has been stuffed in backpacks, carry on luggage, and bumped about in rough seas sailing in our catamaran. Excellent product. I currently have over 232 pastels in my box with room for more! Like you, I break all of my pastels in half, they do seem to travel better in the shorter lengths. I had been debating whether to incorporate more of the NuPastels into my box. After seeing this video I think I will do just that. Excellent video as I constantly struggle to keep a reasonable semblance of order in my box. Time to dig the colour wheel out of my watercolours and give it a spin! lol Ta much Susan.... you are a star! Cheers, Val

So funny this video popped I did the same yesterday, finaly received my box and had time to organize it, wow you are right so long lol but worth it, have a great day tomorrow Susan, can’t wait to use my plein-air easel, happyyy painting Susan

I have seen similar videos and I thank you for keeping this available to your thankful viewers! i could not afford any kind of box after I purchased my pastel sticks! So I built my own I watched a couple of videos right here on RU-vid and I even posted a photo on my Instagram! Same name there as here!

Good video on how to organize your pastels. At the end of the vid, I like how you showed the inserts so you can close the case without spilling pastels everywhere! Every other vid that shows those storage cases never post that bit - drove me crazy lol. Thanks for the info!

Oh my goodness!!! I love the color wheel, round tray storage!!! Wonderful! I’ve gotten so much great information here! THANK YOU❤️👏

Ooooh that’s a work of art in of itself it’s so beautiful!!! If that were mine I’d sleep with it under my pillow at night, heck It’s so special I’d even give it a name! The furthest row on right was my favorite. Can you adopt me so that you put that in you will to me😄😂?

I don’t have a lot of pastels yet, so I only have one multi layer puzzle sorter box. It’s perfect for what I do have. As I expand then I can have one whole box per color or find something else….

I truly enjoyed watching this video. It was so well planed and clearly explained. Thanks again Susan! Shaye

organizing your pastels is the best lesson in color theory... I loved this video; lots of info and great to watch while I had a snack!! :-) Thanks Susan!

The double sketchbox I have which is small, but I load it with pieces for travels. The Dakota I have, the small traveler is great for travel too or storage, but at a great cost. It's very well made too.

I used simple wooden cutlery organizers from a dollar store. You can staple them, store them easily.

It looks like you use a piece of paper on the side to test some colors to see what value or temp they are. Good idea. I find that just relying on how they look is sometimes not indicative enough of where they fall in the value/temp range- some pastels may look light but lay down dark, etc. and vice versa. Unfortunately adds to the time. But necessary.

That was a fun one to watch! So many yummy colors!! Can't wait to get b my first soft set! I have some NuPastels and Rembrandt's, but haven't really used either much, but now I'm ready to jump in and learn.

Susan I found this so helpful, I don’t have Thst many at the moment snd I have them in drawers of a trolley I got from hobbycraft, I have some click together dividers coming today today to put in the drawers and I will arrange my pastels like this. At the moment I am to precious! And they are currently in the drawers in the foam inserts Thst were in the boxes they came in lol, but I will line the bottom of the drawers and then put the organiser strips in and arrange the pastels in there in the colour families. Thsnkyou do much for doing this, I will check out the other videos you mentioned in your playlist as well

A great video that reminds me of my recent sorting of a new studio box. I thought it was fast, but it took hours. Unfortunately my pastels do not all fit in the studio box and I have to sort further. I already own 2 Heilman boxes. They are great. One of my boxes was very tight, but unfortunately the lid broke some of my favorite pastels. So do not fill too tight. I'm looking forward to more videos that I can always learn so much about.

I’m waiting on my new box of Sennelier 80 half sticks. It’s great to see you have them and love them!

Excellent presentation mam.....❤❤❤❤❤

Wow...all the beautiful colors.. great video

My favourite RU-vid video of today, lovely...

Way to many colors for me! Lol! I'm planning to stick to just a few brands for available space reasons. I love the box idea. This is a fantastic video. Thank you.

wonderfully organised! But sometimes I do tend to think that nowadays in our society where it's just all about materialism and consumerism, perhaps having a lot of art materials does kills off creativity - we end up collecting instead of creating. In the Middle Ages they only have red and blue but their art is exquisitely beautiful. Just saying.

This is wonderful, thank you for demonstrating! I'm almost getting braver in breaking the pastels to fit in the box. Almost! Broke the amazing violets today! It was a horrid feeling, lol. Maybe I'll be able to break more later, it seems to be the nice square and rectangular pastels are more intense to break, oh my goodness.

Thank you for this video. I found it really helpful. Curious, which is your all time favorite brand and why?

Awesome!

Mesmerizing. :) Thanks so much. One question: at the time you made this, did you have Terry Ludwigs? And if so, do you integrate them into your color families or keep them in their own box?

Just incredible.. could you swing by some time and organize my pastels please?

Great tutorial! To be honest, I kind of felt hungry after watching, they looked like colored candy, especially when you were breaking them 😆 Curious, which pastels are the ones at the top left?

I hate the Labels!!!!! The Koh i noor pastel has a glued label, very difficult to remove, I took an hour doing this, an unnecessary job 😂

Could you do a review of the jack richesons please? I don't seem to find almost any reviews on them, thanks in advance!!

😂👌 imagine having this problem

Karen - How do you attach the box to your easel? I have a very large Dakota pastel box but I don't believe they're making them anymore. I went to their website and only found plastic containers. I'll order the mini Heilman box but want to make sure I can use my camera easel to save from having to buy a new easel for plein air painting.

Is this the backpack box? Thank you!

Can you recommend a rolled pastel paper for soft pastels?

Dear Susan, can you please tell us what your favourite pastel paper is?