Sunday 12 January 2014

#DIY - Make Up Brush Holder



Today I have for you a different kind of post, it's a #DIY post that I have been meaning to do for a while but just never got round to so today I'm finally going to share it with you. Now up-cycling and getting crafty with everyday objects, giving them a new lease of life and another use is not something I generally do so simplicity was the key for me and definitely what you can expect from this post. Here goes....



It's no secret that I'm a fan of candles and I absolutely fell in love with a White Company candle that you may remember from this post. Now not only did the candle smell amazing but it also came in a really nice glass container and when the candle came to the end of its days I was sad to see it go and began wondering how I could re-use the glass that it came in, after all we are encourage to recycle more and waste less these days.

The candle in question


My first task was to figure out how to get that annoying bit of wax from the bottom of the glass that is left when there's just no more wick to burn ** insert disappointed face here**. I reached for my laptop and turned to trusty Google to figure out the best way to do this and as you can imagine there are endless posts on how to remove the wax with out damaging the glass and various ways of doing this. I chose the way which seemed to be a) the easiest and b) minimal effort and that was to use the freezer! That's right the whole candle went into the bottom draw of my freezer, I cant remember where I read this post but I'm sure if you want to Google it you will come across this method, The post advised to leave the candle in the freezer for a few hours but I forgot about mine so it was in there for a few days. I read that this would make the wax shrink and therefore come away from the edges of the glass allowing it to be removed easily.

Post freezer aftermath 
Once I remembered the candle was in the freezer I took it out and headed to the cutlery draw, my tool of choice was a knife (nothing too sharp don't worry just a bog standard knife like you would use at dinner time) and I had the view that I would be able to use this to break up the wax into smaller pieces and take it out of the glass jar that way. There was no need for all of that effort, as you can see in the picture there is one little dent in the wax and that's where I put the knife in it, when I did that the whole piece of wax moved and became loose so I just tipped the glass upside down and out came the wax... easy!

That was the bulk of the wax out but there was still some wax around the edge of the glass so again I called on Google to find me the easiest way to get the glass squeaky clean and wax free. The easiest answer I found advised to wash the glass jar in tap water as hot as your hands could stand  with a small amount of washing up liquid. This worked a treat, I just ran the hot tap for a while and then filled up the sink making sure the water wasn't too hot. Afterwards I dried off the glass using kitchen towel so that there was not any bits of tea towel left behind and I was left with a shiny glass jar that looked just like new, you would never know it housed a candle in its previous life if it wasn't for the White Company branding printed on the front.


I soon decided that the glass jar would be great for storing my make up brushes that were kept in a draw, this didn't make for convenient daily use! So I put my brushes in the glass but it didn't look very pretty all of my them just resting in a heap on the side of the glass so it was a bit of an anticlimax, a friend suggested that I should fill the glass with something to help the brushes stand up.


At my local Sainsburys I came across these decorative stones in a silver colour, it says they are good for use with candles but hey I thought I would give them a try for my little project and at just £1.99 I decided to take two and give it a go. Ebay is also a great place to look for vase fillers there are many different shapes, sizes and colours so I'm pretty sure there would be something for everybody on there.


I emptied the two tubs of stones into the glass and put my make up brushes in there as intended, I turned the glass round so the White Company branding was at the back and Voila project completed. I'm super happy how this turned out I know it was easy ( I did tell you it would be) and simple to achieve but it means I keep my brushes tidy, they are within easy reach for daily use and it looks great on my dressing table. For those of you interested here is a final picture showing my dressing table set up.


So there you can see my brushes sit nicely on the left hand side of my dressing table. Also I'm no expert in photography and unfortunately the glass does show reflections so that's why you can see me and my cat reflected headless on the middle draw of the dressing table, just in case you were wondering.

I hope you enjoyed this post and maybe its given you an idea of how you can reuse candle jars. Have you done any quick and easy DIY projects like this? let me know in the comments as I think I have caught the DIY bug and I'm on the look out for my next project.

Kayla xx

4 comments:

  1. What a great idea! This looks great, you'd have thought you'd bought it in a shop.

    Jenn | Photo-Jenn-ic

    x

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  2. That's such an excellent idea! And I totally want your dressing table mirror. It's beautiful!

    Roxanne @ Simply Roxilicious!

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