Caran d’Ache Lunch Box (AKA Travel Kit)

 

The Caran d'Ache Swisscolor Travel Kit

Like the Mixed Media Botanical Kit, most Caran d’Ache products I end up buying across the pond at CultPens are things I see the Swiss company promoting on Instagram or its website but will not ship to US customers. How cruel to constantly taunt me that way! But if Caran d’Ache doesn’t want my money directly, I’m just as happy to send it to CultPens, where another item had fallen easily into my shopping cart: the Caran d’Ache Swisscolor Travel Kit.

The sleeve removed, the tin is the Swiss company's signature red.

Like a gift, the contents are wrapped in tissue paper.

Containing Swisscolor water-soluble colored pencils, Swisscolor Aquarelle wax pastels, a waterbrush, stickers and coloring cards, the Travel Kit is intended to keep young sketchers busy in the backseat during boring road trips or maybe even on the tray table while flying.

Travel kit contents: 12 coloring cards, 12 watercolor pencils, 10 water-soluble wax pastels, a waterbrush and a sheet of stickers for decorating the tin.

Caran d’Ache could have filled that kit with a pile of (typically overpriced) rocks, and I still would have bought it, because what I wanted was that adorable lunch box! (If only I still had a job or some other place to carry a lunch to.)

The wax pastels were new to me, so I gave them a scribble. In the same way that Swisscolor watercolor pencils are the less-pigmented, student-grade cousin of Supracolors, Swisscolor Aquarelle wax pastels have the same relationship to Neocolor II water-soluble wax pastels.

Swisscolor Aquarelle wax pastels

Swatches made in Hahnemuhle sketchbook

The student-grade wax pastels feel waxier and more like traditional coloring crayons than Neocolor II. Still, as a kids’ product, it’s leaps and bounds above anything I used as a kid. My swatches show that that even the activated pigments aren’t too shabby.

8/13/23 Swisscolor Aquarelle wax pastels in Hahnemuhle sketchbook 
(Earthsworld reference photo)

Maybe I'll pack a lunch and carry it out to the back deck!

If I were 7, I would be thrilled to receive this Travel Kit just before a big adventure! As someone who has just submitted my Medicare application, I am just as thrilled to have it!