Thursday, June 5, 2014

Tips & Tricks: DIY paint brush rest

Too clever by half!

I paint a lot of different colors at the same time. After getting really annoyed with having to lay wet brushes down all over my workspace (on my laptop keyboard, on rolls of tape, across the dirty brush cup ... ), I decided there must be an easier way!


I bought a pack of white Sculpey (because white is obviously what you want to put wet paint brushes on) and promptly left it on my desk for 3 months.


Eventually I got fed up with clumsily painting myself with a different color every time I reached for something, and knocking brushes off their precarious perches onto my (again, white - what is my deal) desk and made my stinking paintbrush rests already!

Sculpey comes conveniently pre-notched in quarters, so I took each piece and rolled it out into a tube. Then I used a wooden clay shaper thing that I had lying around to create the divots where the brush goes. You can see by the longest one that I didn't make the spaces big enough the first time I pressed into the clay. Whoops.


Then bake in the oven on wax paper, wash the nasty clay residue off your hands 3 times, and voila! Clay paintbrush rests!

This has cut down the amount of times I've put a paintbrush on my laptop by at least 73%. Hey, old habits die hard.

If anyone has any little tips or tricks that help make their crafting process more efficient, I'd love to hear them! Please write in a comment below!

-- Jocelyn // paragraphloop.etsy.com

10 comments:

  1. What a great idea! Seems like a product you could market even!!

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  2. What a great idea! Seems like a product you could market even!!

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  3. I use sculpey and I paint but never thought to make a brush holder like this...I love it! I'll give this a try...

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  4. hmm. i need to create something like this. I keep putting my brushes on my beading mat. not working for me at all!

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  5. such a simple idea but works!
    thanks alot.

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  6. Hi Jocelyn! I LOVE <3 your idea! I don't see a problem with the spaces in your longest one. Painting with acrylics, I use a wide range of paintbrush sizes - from the tiniest, to the large 50's, and even wider flat brushes. Purple being my favorite color, I'd use purple Sculpey to make my paintbrush holders. I think the handles of some of the larger brushes would work well to make the divots. Thanks for the inspiration! Keep painting �� ��

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  7. Sorry, the paint pallet and red heart didn't translate at the end. B-)

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  8. Este material Sculpey ,o que seria? Um tipo de massa de porcelana fria?

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