Altered Paint Can with Altered Paint Brush for Gift Giving

Hello Everyone! Hope you're all having a good day.   For a while now I've wanted to alter a paint brush. There are so many beautiful brushes on the web, but I kind of hit a wall as I like the things I make to have a purpose other than collecting dust. So I decided to add a paint can. I was constantly seeing them separate and thought it would be cute to do them together.

Once the idea hit me, I thought this would be an adorable gift for a beginner, paper crafter filled with little stamps, inks, paper punches and so forth.

As I decorated the can I decided to keep it somewhat plain with a lot of blank, white space (especially on the sides and back) for the new crafter to add her own touches. I left the lid untouched as well, although I may add a white circle with a personalized note should I decide to give it as a gift or sell it. 

A gift package to be filled with items that inspire creativity.  

 

 

 

 

  The Brush

 

I dragged the ink pads (VersaMagic in Spring Pansy, Aloe Vera, Sea Breeze and Pixie Dust) across the surface making sure the edges of each color blended into the next. I love this particular ink for the soft colors and chalky finish.

For the flowers, butterfly, and dragonfly I used clear stamps and Ranger Archival Ink in Jet Black. 

 

Then all that was left was to embellish my brush. I chose gems, pearls, lace, ribbon and a paper butterfly punch to top it off. For the hanging pearl strands I just hot glued the top bead to the brush bristles. To make the butterfly firm and shiny I used a light turquoise embossing powder over the entire butterfly.

Once my paint brush was finished I had an afterthought and decided to dip the bristles in pink paint. This step should be done before you decorate your brush and left to dry. Fortunately it worked out okay for me.

The Paint Can I bought my empty paint can at my local hardware store for about $3.50.

Honestly I had difficulty getting started with this. Trying to measure the paper correctly that wraps around the can was a real pain. Well at least until I said, "Heck with it", grabbed a couple of pieces of eight and a half inch by eleven inch cardstock and made a front panel and a back panel.

I'm not a measuring kind of gal, but I did measure from the bottom ridge of the can to the top ridge so I could use my paper cutter to get a precise cut. If you will be putting a border on your can as I did you don't have to worry about this cut being perfect either since it will be covered.

Then I held my cut paper up to the can and made a mark where the handles were located. In the end, my holes for the handle were a little too big and not round, but it didn't matter since I was going to be covering that area up with lace flowers.
  Using small sections of coordinating paper may be easier than trying to cover the whole can at once like I did.   To make the lace flowers I did a running stitch in lace ribbon with jewelry wire. Then I hot glued them to the can.

The rest was easy as you can add anything you want to decorate it.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask :)
Happy Crafting!