A Crafty Way to Re-Use Old Make-Up Brushes

It’s always useful to have a range of tools to help you put on your make-up in the morning, but sometimes things start accumulating. Before you know it, you have more make-up and equipment than your bathroom shelves can carry. Applicator brushes are particularly troublesome – taking up lots of precious storage space.

Luckily, if you’ve got kids around these brushes can make a fun craft project for little ones, helping you clear a bit of space and giving them something creative to do. With a bit of paint and some googly eyes your everyday make-up brush can become a fun, crazy-haired character – all you need to know is how to clean makeup brushes! If you have a few different brushes you can make a whole family. Here’s how:

1.       Start by working out which brushes you actually use on a regular basis and those that have sat at the back of your cupboard for months. Give those you’ve chosen to ‘up-cycle’ a thorough clean. No one wants to get make-up all over them while doing a craft project! There are plenty of guides on how to clean makeup brushes online. Make sure to avoid products that might damage the stem or head.

2.       Right, time for some craft: To create your fun little brush-haired people start by getting some paints that will cover the existing surface of the handle. As they’re likely to be plastic or wood, you will need to choose the type of paint carefully. Go for bright colors to make it fun.

3.       Use a top layer of paints to draw different outfits on the handles. Tuxedos, dresses, ties, dungarees – the options are endless, you just have to work out how best to represent them on the little handle. It can be a challenge, but that’s half the fun. If you have sparkly nail-varnish to hand you can even use it to give your little guys some glitz.

4.       Now get your googly eyes; these go on the handle directly below the bristles. This section is usually covered in metal or another material to help secure the bristles in place, so use it as a face. To attach the eyes you’ll need some strong glue – just be careful not to get it on your fingers or other surfaces, and supervise children at all times.

5.       Next add some arms. These can be made from a whole host of different materials including paper, pipe cleaners, thin cardboard, string, or wire, depending on what you have to hand and how fixed you want the arms to be. Secure them in place with more glue or discrete pieces of sticky tape.

6.       Voila: a fun little guy with exciting bristle hair! Get creative and give them different hairstyles by creating tiny braids, cutting a Mohican, or coloring some strands with corrector fluid. Once you’ve done a few of them, the kids will have a little community on their hands. Older children could even create brush people unsupervised after the first batch, once they know how to clean makeup brushes – although you may want to hide the brushes you don’t want transformed! Don’t worry if you’ve got lots of different shapes and sizes, that will just make the group more fun to play with: you could even create a family. Enjoy!