Eco Art: DIY Paint Brush (For Kids and Adult Artists)

Nope, I did not suddenly adopt a child- I just borrowed one for a little while - and her name is Isabella. Isabella is 5 years old and caught onto this project really quickly. We decided to have painting time and make all our own art supplies from things we have around already, by picking poke berries for paint (the Declaration of Independence was written in it) and then making our very own eco paint brushes! I think it is really important for children right now to know that not everything they need has to come from an aisle in walmart, Toys'R-Us, or even an art store for that matter - nature holds the key to many a great invention and definitely way more fun.

What You Need:

• A Stick
• Hair (from a human or horse)
• Rubber band (or string, strip of fabric etc...)
• Knife (optional)

Me and Isabella walked around looking for a good stick to use for the brush handle, choosing whichever size would be easy to hold, or match the kind of brush you like to use when painting. Once ya have your sticks, you have the option of using a knife to wittle down one end to a point - this sometimes makes it easier when trying to paint a finer line.
Take a clump of human or horse hair (hair thick enough to paint with) and hold it to the end of the stick you will want to paint with. Choosing the amount of hair, is just like choosing the brush size.
Simply use your rubber band to hold the hair in place by wrapping it around a few time tightly. You can also use string or cotton fabric to tie it on snug.
Once you have the hair tied on, simply take some scissors to shape the hairy brush head- you can make it flat by cutting straight across, or you can make a fine point by cutting at an angle on each side coming to a point.
This is the face of success.... Isabella made a few paintings on recycled paper and some rocks!I will share more on making natural paints and dyes super soon - cause it is plant dye season!

Xoxooo

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?