Calling all pastel artists. Unison Colour have redesigned their packaging, and we're marking the occasion with a sale across the whole range.
The new boxes
The set boxes have been rebuilt properly. Scuff-resistant on the outside, so they don't look tired after a term of being carried about, and a magnetic closure rather than a flap that gives up on you. They're made to survive an actual working life - in a bag, in a car boot, on a wet hillside in County Down.
Which matters more with pastels than with almost anything else. A soft pastel is pigment and not much else, and a box that springs open in transit turns a careful palette into a tray of dust and stubs. Keeping the sticks intact is not a small thing.
And the singles are individually packaged
This is the one I'm most pleased about, selfishly.
Single pastels now come in their own hanging carton. Which means you can stand at the rack and pick through the greys properly - turn them over, read the numbers, put them back - without leaving with pigment up to your wrists.
Anyone who has ever browsed loose singles in a shop knows exactly what I mean. You find your colour, you find three more, and then you're looking for somewhere to wipe your hands before you touch your own coat. That's over.
It also means each stick carries its colour name and number clearly, and a barcode, so we can find things faster and you spend less time squinting.
What's in the sale
Sets — 15% off, in store and online. The 8s, the 16 and 30 half-stick sets, the 18s, the colour ranges, the 36s and the 72s. These are the new boxes.
Single pastels in the original packaging — £3.50, down from £5.80, in store only. We've a shelf of singles in the old wrap and nowhere to put them once the new cartons arrive. If you're in Belfast, this is the moment to fill the gaps in your box.
Nothing about the pastel itself has changed. Same recipe, same pigment load, same sticks rolled by the same hands in Northumberland. Only the paper round the outside is different.
Why Unison, if you've not used them
Hand-rolled rather than extruded, with very little binder — mostly pigment and water, shaped and dried slowly. That's why people reach for the word buttery, and why they lay down without drag or scratch.
The colour thinking is the clever part. Most ranges make tints by adding white and shades by adding black, which is efficient and turns everything faintly grey the moment you blend. Unison instead built the range as families of related hues — more than 380 of them — so neighbouring colours mix without going muddy. You can layer them hard and they stay clear.
They work wet or dry, too, which makes them useful alongside watercolour and acrylic.
Browse the full Unison Colour range →
A word to the Belfast pastellists
If you paint in pastel on this island, you'll know the Pastel Society of Ireland - founded in 1988 by a group of Northern Ireland pastellists who wanted the medium shown on its own terms rather than tucked into a watercolour show. Their annual exhibition is one of the genuine pleasures of the year.
And you may already own an Emma Colbert set. Emma is a Northern Ireland artist, and Unison have built three sets around her palettes — the Animal 16 and 30 half-stick sets and the Animal 36. Nice to see a local name on a Northumberland box.
Come and have a rummage
We're at 4 Callender Street, in the middle of Belfast. The pastels are out where you can see them, nobody will hurry you, and - for the first time - you can go through the whole rack and leave with clean hands.
Bring your existing box if you're filling gaps. Far easier than guessing from a chart.
Bertie
