#43 The Benefits of Swatching

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. 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. I will link to the ones I used below.

Benefit 1 - Accurate Colors
Benefit 2 - Know What you Have
Benefit 3 - Quick Choices while Crafting
Benefit 4 - Making Educated Decisions
Benefit 5 - Reducing Decision Fatigue
Benefit 6 - Viewing Variations
Benefit 7 - Get more use from your Supplies

Let's consider 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?

How you decide if you are going to swatch your craft supplies depends heavily on how you use them, and how you store them.

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 (I’ll link to a 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. 

We are also talking a lot about swatching and choosing colours over in the Craft with Dawn Lewis Facebook group. 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.

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.

LINKS
Episode #43 blog post

Website

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Craft with Dawn Lewis Facebook Group

Coin Collecting Sleeves (Amazon Australia)

Coin Collecting Sleeves (Amazon USA)

YouTube Live

Timezone Converter

Aradiya Toys

Hobbii 8/4 yarn

Sandy Alnock Hex Charts

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