How to Make a Colorful Brush Stand at Home from Paper Waste

Making a colorful paintbrush stand from waste paper is a lot of fun and an experience of learning when you engage the kids in the process. My son loves this activity so much that he often spends most of his weekends in creating beautiful craft items from waste materials. In this hub, I have discussed how to make colorful paintbrush stands from waste newspaper and glue through step by step instructions.

Collect some waste papers. Anything from office dustbin, old newspapers, and waste envelops, paper wraps from grocery items, etc would be fine for the purpose.

Get some waste hard papers, cardboard chocolate boxes or harder paper sheets to make the frame. While one can easily purchase all the materials needed, I would prefer people to use waste papers as it sends some valuable message. That is “there is nothing called a waste as far as human needs are concerned!”

A pair of scissors (a paper cutting knife would also serve the purpose), a stapler with pins (you may replace stapler with just a piece of thread of around 60 centimeters), colors (as per your choice), brushes.

You also need some substance to make homemade adhesive. I use wheat (or corn) flour for the purpose. The most convenient flour I use is called “MAIDA” in India. It is finer quality wheat flour used to make snacks in most Indian houses. In order to prepare a mug full of adhesive that can make around 7-10 pieces of such paint brush stands you need only around 50 grams (around four teaspoon full) of flour.

Optional: You may also need some varnish oil or any synthetic wood polish coating to make your crafts damp proof and to have a glossy surface. However, this is not necessary as we are interested in making something by using materials that are readily available at any regular household and the purpose of the activity is to engage children in a productive way.

Prepare the homemade adhesive. It is the easiest part of the process. You just have to take around a 750 ml of water and put it on boil. In around another 250 ml of normal water add the wheat flour or 'MAIDA' and mix it well by a spoon so that there are no bumps of flour. Add this mix to the boiling water and stir for around 5 minutes. Once you get a thick soupy kind of substance, remove the utensil from the stove and let it cool down to normal temperature. CAUTION: Do not ask small kids to prepare the adhesive. They may injure themselves or make a mess of your kitchen.

Make the frame: The next task in the process is to make the frame for the stand. First prepare a square (you may prefer any other shape as well; a rhombus, an oval shaped piece or anything else as per your choice. This serves as the backdrop of the brush stand and gives it stability while used as a wall hanging. In the brush stands shown in the picture I have not used any and they look reasonably fine to me. However, adding a back support makes it much more stable while it is full with tall brushes.

Once you have the back-support ready, take another piece of hard paper sheet and make a cone with the help of a stapler pin or threads. Just fix the cone to the back support with staple pin or just fix it with the adhesive. Please see the picture diagram to see how it looks. Now it is time to stick small pieces of newspapers on the frame with the adhesive already prepared. In another hub “engaging children in creative activities”, I have already discussed the process of making such waste paper crafts in more detail. Just keep on sticking paper pieces in layers and you are done. Just make sure to get uniform thickness throughout by sticking required layers of paper pieces. Make a hole somewhere on the top portion of the stand to make it easy for wall hanging.

Once the brush stand is ready, dry it properly under sun or just leave it in some corner of your house for a day for drying.

It is now time to make the brush stands colorful and attractive. One may design many things on this. Once you finish coloring the stands dry it again for the colors to dry up properly. Wood polish coatings would make these more attractive and damp proof against humidity.

Finally, hang it on the walls behind your study table and fill it with brushes. It looks so beautiful that your friends would be envious.

Hope this hub will be appreciated by people who are into recycling and reusing waste products in creative pursuits.