It’s Handmade Monday again!  I did something a little different, mostly because it was Mother’s Day and my husband’s birthday this weekend.  And because I’ve been working on a little project that has turned into a little bigger project (meaning it took MUCH longer to dry than I ever imagined it would!) so it’s not ready for prime time yet.

I think this is a pretty useful idea, although it’s probably not original.  If you haven’t already thought of it, you might find it helpful.  It wasn’t completely mine, my husband helped me find the box, and I’m really not sure which of us really thought of the paintbrush holder idea.  Maybe we both thought of it at exactly the same time.  Either way, it was quick and it worked, so bravo on both counts!  That’s my kind of project.

It’s so easy, I’m just going to post it right here.  I needed something to store all of my various colors of acrylic paints that I’ve collected for painting things, mostly paper mache.  They had outgrown my plastic box, and were spilling out onto the shelf and it was very difficult to know what I had (which had caused me to buy the same color twice more than once!).  It was just a mess.

So, we headed off to the home improvement store and looked at the various boxes.  I settled on a Stanley brand box that was probably meant to hold nuts and bolts, but had removable compartments and was the perfect size to fit paint bottles (laying down).  Most of the compartments would hold 4, altho there are also 2 that will hold 10 each.  And I have a few smaller paints that will also fit.  It snaps shut to keep things from falling out and has a handle.

There was only one problem.  There was nowhere to put my paintbrushes.  I thought it would be great to have somewhere handy to store paintbrushes with the paints so when I got them out everything would be together.

Because the little compartments come right up the lid and they are too long to fit inside any of the compartments, there is no way to store them inside the box.

However, there are 2 empty sides, with all that empty space! It was the perfect spot to store paintbrushes.  So, we simply used hot glue to affix a piece of ribbon (which I had) on the side, with loops that fit 4 brushes. I didn’t do one for the other side, because I don’t need that much brush storage (yet) but it would be easy to do more if need be.  It took almost no time at all, and doesn’t look bad.

Hope everyone had a good weekend, and I hope this was helpful!  🙂  Now, scoot over and visit the other blogs at Handmade Monday, they always make the best stuff!