Bristles for Brushes...trial and error

As much fun as it can be at times, when it becomes more error than success it can become frustrating.

After a bit of experimenting I think I have settled on a brush method.

First you need some hair, of course it is always important to get ones materials from an ethically raised, sustainable source which in this case is.....moi.

So I have a habit of letting my hair get REALLY long, when I was ill it got to the point where I could almost sit on it and I would get comments from strangers. It was a pain to wash and brush.. Before I had my big surgery I had no idea what my recovery was going to be like, I was aiming to make life easy for myself by cutting the hair short so it would be easy to care for. I was preparing for the worst (a long and somewhat painful recovery) so that anything less awful than that would be a bonus.

This meant cutting about 15 inches off my hair which was cut whilst tied and displayed on my bookcase as a trophy. (This hair was not suitable for charitable uses as it was very thin and low quality due to my illness and all the strong meds I had been taking.) It looked like a dark blonde dis-articulated cats tail. You will be pleased to hear my recovery was a hundred times easier than I could have hoped for.

18 months (and 2 big surgeries later) I am looking for a bristle source and there it was sitting on my bookcase and from there I went. And I need to cut to my hair again.

I took a length from the end of the bundled hair, about an inch and a half long. Select a pinch of hairs to suite the size of brush you want to make.






Twist together and hold them together with some form of clip, I have used a clothes peg.

Using a flexible white glue (like PVA, tacky glue, elmers) and dip the ends making sure that all the hair ends are covered, allow to dry

Note, at this point in writing this post I didn't feel very well. I spent two hours in the bathroom feeling progressively worse before calling for an ambulance and spending my early sunday morning hours receiving emergency IV fluids at the local hospital. Anyway, they sent my mostly re-hydrated ass home with instructions to drink like a fish whilst I shift this gastroenteritis. Most people don't need the hospital for the bug which is doing the rounds here at the moment, however I am short precisely one colon (see above major surgeries) and if I am ill, I can dehydrate extremely fast. At midnight I was fine and writing this post but by 2.11 am we called the emergency services.  A few bags of fluids and some anti-nausea meds and I felt more human and was sent home, hopefully to sleep it off.

Returning to the post 48 hours later, we continue.

To give the bristles some strength, I wrapped a thin strip of tissue paper around the glued end. (1) After experimenting I recommend that you not trim the brush head at this point.

Butt the brush end to the handle and attach with a strong glue (2). I used superglue gel but E6000 would probably be great, but it would take longer to dry and I don't have any yet :(

For the final ferrule, I wrapped another layer of tissue paper (which happened to be silver/grey), wider this time to cover the paper already there and the join with the handle (3), glue and allow to dry. Remove excess. Tissue paper wet with glue tears nicely and smooths with almost no visible seam.

 Trim bristles to the desired shape and size using real brushes to guide you. Seal with an acrylic varnish to protect the ferrule and handle.

And you are finished, now enjoy your handy work. Here we have a selection I made, some of the ferrules I coloured with metallic sharpies before sealing. The green handled brush on the right has a ferrule made of aluminium foil from the kitchen as an experiment but I think it is too shiny and prefer the others.

 

And as promised to Nina, here is the brush handle which was attacked with carving tools and became a wand, there is not much detail but it certainly implies more than just a plain stick.

And in the non 12th scale mini world, this might have fallen into my trolley in the toy section of the supermarket today. I treated myself after such a rough couple of days. (£2.99) Love cats, love lego, what more could I ask for.

What next? Those paint pans need a box to live in!

I am beginning to think about the pieces of furniture that any self respecting which would have in her home, and then I can select a size for the ground floor. Then construction of the mock-up can begin and all the design choices and challenges worked out before really 'breaking ground'

Until another day, Kim

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.