Upcycled Makeup Storage Jars

I needed some storage for my make-up brushes as they were all just lying in a shallow dish in my bathroom and looked messy.

 

My idea for a solution was to stand the brushes in a jar, they were also getting quite dusty in the dish. I wanted the jars to be pretty. I've seen so many lovely upcycled jars on Pinterest that I thought this would the ideal solution. I decided to spray paint some of the many old jars that I have at home.

 

The tools I used:

Rustoleum spray paint in marlin blue

Spray-Mate spray paint in silver

Old jars

Baking soda

Cooking oil

The first thing to do was clean the jars. I found a really great way to remove stubborn labels and jar residue on Pinterest. You mix baking soda with cooking oil and spread the mixture onto the jar and leave for about 10 minutes which works perfectly.

Once they were clean it was time to begin spray painting. There seems to be a general consensus that Rustoleum is the spray paint which works the best (it is definitely better than the Spray-Mate I've been using for other projects). I'm trying to theme my in bathroom in different shades of blue. So I decided to go with the shade marlin blue

I'm really bad about following instructions given on products, but the first jar that I spray painted didn't look so great. Then I decided to follow the instructions on the can and the second jar looked awesome. I also sanded the second jar between coats and this produced a lovely smooth finish. It also helped to cover up any mistakes. I left it to dry for the 24 hours recommended.

My make up brushes are all different lengths. To make them look nice and uniform, I thought that I would fill the jar with something to hold them in place. I had read that you can fill jars with rice. I had some pearl barley in the cupboard that was shortly going to pass its sell by date, this was my rice substitute. I spraypainted the barley, to prevent any nasty insects from taking residence at a later date. I used some silver spray paint for this which was leftover from another project. This process took ages! I didn't think of this beforehand, but barley is round and this makes spraypainting every surface very difficult. If I did this again I would use something double-sided like coffee beans. After several coats this was the result:

 

 

 

All that remained to do was put the brushes into the jar. I love the finished product:

 



 

 

 

Enjoy!