Wednesday, July 10, 2013

DIY Tutorial: A pretty place for paintbrushes

by Andrea Mulder-Slater

As artists, we've amassed a large collection of paintbrushes and - in my case - palette knives, and all of those tools need a place to live. Typically we use old coffee mugs, glass jars and whatever else we can get our hands on. The result is a bit of a mismatched mess!

A while ago, I found some terrific unfinished wood vases at a yard sale. I bought them not knowing at the time exactly what I would use them for. Then, I had the idea to paint them and use them as mini storage containers.

For this project, I used our paint of choice - Stevenson - a Canadian made acrylic paint which is extremely durable and colorfast. It is the same paint we use to paint all of our murals.



I've always liked the combination of chocolate brown and  pink and chocolate brown and turquoise. For my containers, I used Burnt Umber (for the chocolate), Phthlao Turquoise (for the turquoise) and a combination of Titanium White and Quin Red (for the pink).

(Tip: If you don't have turquoise paint, you can easily mix it up by adding a teeny tiny touch of red to blue & yellow. As always, lighten your colors with white.)

I painted the inside of my wooden cylinders with brown. Then, I did a base coat of pink on one and turquoise on the other.


Once dry, I painted chocolate brown rings on the containers freehand. They are not perfect, but that adds to the charm. To complete the design, I dipped the end of my brush into white paint and made little dots around the inner and outer edges of the rings.



A quick coat of water-based sealer completed the project.



Next I will be tackling our empty coffee cans!

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