6 Ways to Use Your Old Brushes!

Hello, everyone!  And welcome to the new year! I hope you all had fabulous holidays full of brand new art supplies!

If you got some new brushes for Christmas this year, you're probably considering tossing out your old ones. But don't!  Old brushes may seem obsolete once you've replaced them, but you can always find a use! Here are some ways you can still get some mileage out of them:

If your rounds/detail brushes have lost their point, give them a new job!

Your round can now be used to make more bold, expressive strokes and continuous fat lines and that detail brush would be perfect for applying masking fluid!

But maybe you've got a brush whose bristles are really spread out:

Don't toss it!  Brushes with crazy bristles can give you organic textures and help you create patterns you otherwise couldn't.

Plus, when you stop caring about the quality of your brush, you can just throw caution to the wind and go nuts with it.

Brushes that have been left sitting on their tips almost always come out looking something like this:

There goes a perfectly good Flat...

OR there goes a brand new Deerfoot Stippler!

Experiment with the new shapes you can make with your new-shaped brush!

If you've committed the cardinal sin of acrylic painting and accidentally let your paint dry onto your brush, it's not a lost cause!

You can use your seemingly-hopeless brush to create interesting patterns and designs within the paint, just like you would with a color shaper!

And when that fails, you can still use...the handle!

Some brushes have this cool tapered tip to them, which can double as a color shaper, Paint Pusher, or palette knife!

Since these handles are made to be used with art supplies, they can withstand the torment of mixing paint or varnish--and you don't have to ruin a perfectly good butter knife!

If you have a brush with bristles that are just too far gone, consider just cutting it all the way down.

The short hairs all packed together tightly will act similarly to a scrubber brush, and you can use it to pick up color you've already laid down!

Of course, you can only do so much with some brushes, and then it's just time to let them go.

The best way to keep your brushes from aging too quickly is to clean and condition them with a product I personally adore, The Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver.