Paintbrush Handles and Dremel Identity Crisis

Before I talk about matchsticks and dremels which think they are lathes, I want to thank the people who have checked out my fledgling blog, followed and left comments. You have been hugely encouraging and for that I am most grateful.

Yesterday was my most visited day ever with 17 page views (taking me to 114) and more than doubled my followers (from 3 to 7) so welcome all, make yourselves at home and grab a cup of tea. I am going to try to get content up at a rate of about 2-3 posts per week.

One of my favourite things is finding new ways to use easily available and low cost supplies (often from the DIY store) and use them to make unique items or give mass produced items some character. I want somewhere to share my findings, also if I go without making something for a few days I wont have post fodder so it will kick my butt into gear.

Right now I have a good range of craft supply basics but lack many tools and specialist items, I will be obtaining these as I can. I have a long list of things I would like and tools I would like to try. I wanted to try using a drawplate to reduce the thickness of a cocktail stick to make paintbrush handles.

Lacking a draw plate, I decided to experiment.

I put a very cheap matchstick (2.4mm sq and 43mm long) from a kids craft pack into the dremel multi-tool

Then worked at it with coarse and then fine sandpaper. The first attempt I went too far and it snapped, but my second try was more successful and yielded a quite convincing scale paint brush handle.

 

Once you have reached the desired thickness, use folder piece of sandpaper or a cutting tool to thin the piece where you wish to separate it. I believe in lathe working this is called parting

Make lots more !

Give the handles some colour, here I have given them a watercolour wash to tint them without coating them (they will be sealed later)







I doubt I will be able to turn fine spindles on the dremel (even if I get a workstation to hold the dremel level and still) however I think with my cheap woodcarving tools I can imply greater detail with a few scored lines. After a few handles I tried the carving tools again and got a reasonable first magic wand which just needs to be stained, it can also be Belinda's first wand.

Model ship builders apparently use drawplates to create rails and pegs for their work, for woodwork the tool is used from the 'wrong' side of the die using successively smaller holes until the desired size is reached. I want to make some drawing pencils (and coloured ones like my real sets) and for this I feel I would need the reproducibility of a drawplate, using the same final hole for the whole set. Sat next to each other is will be very clear that they are not identical in width, there is a lot more room for variation in a jar of paintbrushes, I have about 10 different sizes, colours and styles in my brush pot (mug).

I need to work on creating the bristles for the brushes next, I tried some last night but it needs more work (the brush on the far left above has a little cyanoacrylate gel on it still, must sand that off.

Petit Paint Pans and Questioning my Sanity

Hope you are all keeping well

I sat down tuesday evening (in preparation for the livestream of the evening of awesome with Hank and John Green) with some crafting supplies to experiment.

I can't make a box for the watercolours until I see how big the pans will be, so that is the first thing to do. Full size pans are 30mm x 19mm x 10mm which seems fine until you start to divide by 12.

To give me a form to work around I cut a matchstick in half to give me the closest measurement I could get (Image 1 below). This was 1.35mm x 2.25mm when measured with a digital caliper which is quite possibly one of the most essential tools in my still limited experience. Mine are a cheap set from ebay, I'm sure they aren't 100% perfect but they are 1000 times better than me squinting with a ruler and guessing.

This is a few pans from my collection, two whole and one half pan. These got calipered (that is a word right?) which led to the decision that Belinda will be using whole pans, I'm crazy but not that crazy.

My technique was to wrap a 10mm strip of paper (thin, like tracing paper) around the thinned end of the matchstick like quilling, using white glue to form a slightly squashed tube. Remove from the matchstick and allow to dry. (2-5)

Take slices approx 1mm from this tube (chopping off any uneven ends) and squeeze into a rectangular shape. (6+7)

Take a little square of paper 5x5mm or so. Dip one end of the squared off slice (from the tube) into the white glue and press down onto the little paper scrap, allow to dry. Once dry the excess will be snipped off. (8&9)

Giving you pans which may not be quite 1/12th of my original pans but are freaking tiny and will leave your family questioning wether your medication dose needs increasing.

To fill, you could put in some polymer clay or a dab of acrylic paint. For accuracy however I took a scalpel and dug out a little pea of semi-solid paint and poked it in with a toothpick. If you have a brush small enough then you could make tiny little watercolour with this set.

I may try again and see if I can get a better result with polymer clay but I suspect the wall thickness may be an issue. Unless I make them all as one large block, experimenting will continue.

SO. This has been my first tutorial, let me know what you think and whether I should do more in the future. If so, what items would any self respecting witch have that I can experiment in making?


Thanks to all for visiting my fledgling mini-blog, please leave me some love below.
Kim


Two little notes.
1. Metric Measurements.....I am in the UK so whilst I am quite familiar with imperial measurement and will use them for quilting and baking, when it comes to dividing by twelve, and getting down to 32ths of an inch it only makes sense (to me) to use metric.

2. Photography. I like cameras, but until I have my new desk set up, all images will be on a light or dark background whichever is most appropriate (the black above is my planner). Also my digital camera is about 7 or 8 years old and just 3.2MP. It does good macro but so far I have been using my phone which has an 8MP camera (Samsung Galaxy S2). Later this year I hope to replace my olympus camera and will set up a little "studio" on my desk, a little foam core roombox with soft light from both sides which should improve my shots. My images are edited in GIMP, a free graphics program which I use to scale the images down and convert to jpg, this means photos with 1/10th the file size so my picasa allowance goes further.

Project One - A Home for Belinda the Witch

Good day all.

So I listed my preferred mini themes in an earlier post, but in the last few days whilst I have been resting up a back injury (moving the desk perhaps not a great idea) I have had Belinda the mini witch on my mind, and all over my pinterest account. Tudor cottages and dark furniture in 1:1 scale and some amazing magical scenes in 1:12 filled my mind. So this scene will be my first project back into minis.

I spent some time last night (couldn't sleep, back pain) sketching out some ideas for my witches house, a modular construction allowing me to display on a bookcase but put together as a complete house when I wish to show it off. More about that at a later date.

To begin with, I shall make lots of nice things to go inside what will be a temporary roombox. Meanwhile, I can work on rough cardboard prototypes of the actual house, allowing me to put a lot of hidden detail in each section before actually investing in the materials to build and dress the final house. Also, once most of the main furniture has been made, I can better determine the size needed to allow me to add decorative items for years to come without anything looking too empty. More on the design at a later date.

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So now we come to Belinda, who is for the time being just an image in my head. An image mostly consisting of her character and very little of her appearance. Perhaps I shall sculpt her myself, perhaps she will come to me whilst at a show or from an artists shop. When I see her, I will recognise her. For now, think of Heidi Ott's Old Lady doll. She will likely wear a lot of black (and other dark colours), but have a worn kindly face, that of the local witch to whom everyone goes to for advice. She takes walks in the woods, communing with nature and spends hours in her garden tending to magical herbs and traditional vegetables.

I am sure that I will not be the first mini-ist to inject certain aspects of myself into my mini characters. One thing I like to do and that has entertained me whilst I was ill has been drawing and sketching, a little bit of journaling. Maybe a bit of zentangle. I think Belinda might share this interest also, and so the first thing I want to make for her is some art supplies.

• Watercolour paint set in an old wooden box
• Brushes and a water jar
• Tubes of spare paints
• Ceramic Palette
• Art journal to sketch in
• Completed work

It is late here now and I must go to bed, I have a busy day of errands and guides tomorrow so give me a day or two and we will see how the above plans go.

First, the little pans that hold the paint within the box.

Scale size should be......2.5mm x 1.5mm x 0.8mm ........this could be interesting!