Storage for Unison pastels

Lesley Crawford's Unison Pastels - open boxes

Those who own Unison Pastels know that their size and shape means that they don't always fit easily into conventional pastel boxes with slots - and some pastel storage boxes can be very expensive.

Plus the nice bit about Unisons is that you can buy sets relating to a colour and it's nice to be able to keep them all together.  I've still got mine in their original boxes with the foam inserts!

Lesley Crawford wrote to tell me about she stores her brand new Unison Pastels. 

I was researching storage boxes, and found these when I googled plastic boxes. They were called boxes for peel-off stickers - something to do with card making I think.

I picked up twelve plastic boxes on eBay for £13, including postage and packing  I made a corrugated tray, and each box will take 60 Unison pastels,   They arrange neatly in two rows of 15, 30 to a tray, so 60 in a box

They all fit neatly onto a table when opened, and stack with a very small footprint if I need to put them away, and being so light and small are ideal to transport.

It's as if they were made for Unison pastels. I won't tell you how many boxes are filled yet!!

Above and below are photographs of Lesley's pastel boxes.

Pastel boxes open on Lesley's desk

The boxes seem to be something called Peel Off boxes by Weston Boxes.  They sell for £4.60 for a pack of 5.  There's also a range of transparent boxes in lots of different sizes.

Lesley's taken a look at the link now and agrees they look very like them.  We compared prices.  She got 10 boxes from eBay for £13 and I priced them with Weston Boxes as being

• 2 packs of 5 boxes @ £4.60 per pack = £9.20
• postage = £4.25 (missing from the website bit I asked them!)
• total =  £13.45

An alternative storage solution can be seen in Product Review: Really Useful Boxes (for art media and crafts)

For more information about Unison Pastels (which are the most popular pastel in the poll I run) see Unison Pastels - Resources for Artists

Plastic boxes full of Unison Pastels - and stacked

You can see Lesley's pastel art on her website http://gaia-art.co.uk

If you've got a good solution for storage 

or anything which is a cost-effective solution for anything to do with art 

DO let me know by leaving a comment and a link or contacting me (see right hand column).