Arts & crafts time? Keep your colors clean!

Q Tip Painting Tips!

I was as going through my facebook feed this morning and the 2nd post on my wall was this picture from Q-tips.  It immediately caught my attention because just last night we had paint night at our house with the kids.

At first I was thinking that they were showing and leading us to the idea of using a Q-tip to clean our watercolour pans (which would actually be a good idea).  Then I was thinking maybe of using the Q-tip to actually clean the actual individual colors.  I know when my daughter starts getting serious involved into painting with her watercolour set she gets all the colors mixed up and the entire pan looks like a hurricane has hit it.  So now once everything starts getting a little dry I thought about taking the Q-tip and actually cleaning / scraping the messy part of the individual colors back down to the “original” color.

What do you think?
How do you keep your colors clean as well as your pans?

I would love to hear some suggestions or your input on this subject.