Nature DIY Part 2: Cat & Human Hair Paint Brush

After making my Poke Berry paint (see Nature DIY Part 1) I realized that it had been so long since I actually painted that I no longer had brushes to paint with! Regular paints were too toxic for me, so I had skipped the whole painting medium of art the last 7 years and tried other less noxious endeavours. This turned out to be a great gift that forced my trained art mind out of the box... and on to discover things like this...

First you'll need to find some sticks, broken branches or strong vine for the handle of your brush. I cut mine from some dead vines hanging from a tree behind my house. You want the wood to be fairly easy to carve but not weak enough to break with pressure.

I then took a kitchen knife and shaved off the rough bark that was on the outside of the vine, from top to bottom. Doing this all the way to the top is optional, but is kind of fun. :)
You then will want to carve a point at the brush end of your stick, as pointy as you can get it. Above the pointy end I carved an indentation (as shown in the pictures here) as a place to wrap something around the bristles- because I did not use any type of glue or adhesives.

This is a ball of human hair, my hair to be exact. For a more uniform brush I would recommend cutting a chunk of hair out...but since I already had this giant ball of hair laying around (actually waiting to go into the compost), I just balled it up, and used scissors to snip off the ends. I tied a rubber band around the spot where the indentation was carved, to hold the hair in place.

Then I wrapped some scrap organic cotton over the rubber band and the loose hair very tightly.

Human hair makes an awesome paint brush!!!

And cat hair too! I got this hair ball from my neighbor since my cat wasn't shedding enough for my project :)

I put the cat hair on a Goji Berry branch and wrapped it with organic cotton too. The pointy carved tip under the hair can add some really cool lines when the right pressure is applied.

This is my quickie painting sample of what both the human hair and cat hair brushes combined can do. This is using the Poke Berry paint too (which only requires the berries, salt and water to make)! I think this is one super dee duper bad ass non toxic art project. YAY!

What other things could I use to make paint brushes? What other art tools can be made too?

Nature DIY Part 1: Poke Berry Paint and Dye

Poke Berries are a deep purple blackish colored berry growing on the Poke Weed which are totally beautiful and totally poisonous berries. I would not use them for dying clothing, but today I wanted to dye my hemp shower curtain and when I realized it was making an awesome magenta color dye, I made another thicker batch for paint!

This pic above shows you what the Poke Berry looks like, I cut about 10-15 bunches like this to gather enough pigment for the dye.
I was rather lazy about the dying process this time (unlike my last post with plum skins, which I did completely following directions) - I dropped the poke berries in the (not for food) pot, filled up enough water to fit the fabric in, then added about a half cup of kosher salt.
After bringing this concoction to a boil, I let it simmer and set for about 30 minutes (the longer it simmers the better your dye will be). I then added the 100% hemp fabric for my shower curtain to the Poke Berry dye! Check out the rad color!
I then realized this would make a awesome watercolor paint, so I gathered about 7 more bunches of poke berries and added them to the old poke berries from the dye to be boiled again with only a small amount of water. (The hemp fabric & dye had been poured into another bucket.) Now if you are loving the Poke paint, but are like WTF? about my paint brush in the pic above... that is because I made the paint brushes too- which I will tell ya'll about in Part 2 Nature DIY~!!!
Just like traditional watercolors you can get variations of pigment by adding water to the thicker Poke Berry paint, which I tried to illustrate in my quick & somewhat creepy flying shark sperm shaped monster pet with eggs painting. :)

Do you use natural paints? Have you ever experimented with henna or mud painting? Please share your secrets here!