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How to make a paint brush Christmas decoration

Paint brush christmas decoration

The project

This festive season, forget buying new decorations – it’s time to make your own. This D.I.Y. paint brush Christmas decoration is the perfect Christmas craft  project for the kids, allowing them to express their creative side while also producing unique ornaments for your home.

With this project, paint brushes are transformed into characters like the Grinch, or traditional festive figures, such as Santa and a snowman. But the brilliance is they can be transformed into whatever you like! Whether your kids love Elsa and Olaf, dinosaurs or dogs, they can create their very own paint brush characters to decorate the home.

These Christmas ornaments  can be used to adorn the tree, as a table setting, or as a wider part of your Christmas decorations. All you’ll need is some wide paint brushes – usually used to paint a wall – and some common craft materials, including paint, glitter and felt. You’ll be feeling the Christmas spirit in no time!

Tools & materials required to make a paint brush Christmas decoration

Steps

1Select your paint brushes and paint

Start by selecting the paint brushes and colours of paint you’d like to use for this D.I.Y. project. We suggest using wider brushes – what you would normally use for painting a wall – with wooden handles. It’s important that the handles are wooden as the paint needs to stick. For this project, we’re going to use four different brushes.
Selecting your paint brushes

2Prepare your brushes and area

Before you paint anything, it’s best to lay something down to protect your working surface. If any of your handles have barcodes or labels on them, use some sandpaper to remove them before painting. 
Preparing brushes and craft area

3Paint the handles

It’s time to paint the wooden part of your paint brush. Don’t worry too much about going over onto the metal part of the brush because we’ll be adding felt or decorations over the top of the line – you don’t have to be too careful.

Today, we’re painting a Santa, Grinch, Santa belt and snowman.

Paint three of your paint brush handles red. These will be your Santa, Grinch and Santa Belt. Paint the handle of the last paint brush blue. Leave all to dry. 

Painting wooden part of the paint brush

4Add more decoration

Now that the top half of the brush is dry, add to the bottom half (the bristles). You will have to be more careful with your approach, as you don’t want to get paint on the dry half!

The Santa doesn’t need any extras – it’s ready for decoration.

For our Grinch, we’re going to add masking tape to the metal part of the brush, and paint the tape and brush green. Painting the tape saves you doing multiple coats on the metal, and it’s easier to draw the face on later once dry.

For the Santa belt, add black multipurpose tape over the top of the silver part of the brush.

Add the glitter to the bristles of your snowman brush.

Leave all your brushes to dry.

Adding decorations to paint brush

5Add embellishments

Now that all the paint has dried, we’ll add some eyes, fun stickers and felt to bring these guys to life.

For the Santa brush, cover the metal part with white felt to give Santa a hat. Before you stick the felt to the brush, cut a hole and poke through some decorations (e.g. holly for the hat). Secure using PVA glue. Finally, add eyes and a red pom pom nose below the felt (on top of the bristles).

For the Grinch, add a thin line of white felt to the top of the metal part for the hat, secure using glue. Add green pom poms to the length of the handle. Draw on lines for the face with permanent markers (you’ll need black for the face and white for the eyes).

For the Santa belt brush, add stick-on gems in a rectangular shape to form the buckle.

For the snowman, add felt over the entire metal area and secure with glue. Then mark the snowman’s eyes and mouth on the felt using the permanent marker. Add a carrot shaped nose using a little orange paint. Finally, create a hat for your snowman using the blue pompoms.

Leave all your paint brushes to dry.

Adding further embellishments to your paint brush decoration

6Display your artwork

Once everything is dry, thread some ribbon through the hole at the top of the handle and tie to create a loop. Use to display on your tree or around the house. We’re going to use ours as a table decoration and as place cards for our Christmas table. 

7Let’s get started!

Start your D.I.Y. paint brush decoration project by exploring our range of paint brushes.
Health & Safety

Please make sure you use all equipment appropriately and safely when following the advice in these D.I.Y. videos. You need to be familiar with how to use equipment safely and follow the instructions that came with the equipment. If you are unsure, you may feel it is safest to consult an expert, such as the manufacturer or an expert Bunnings Team Member.

Grave health hazards are linked to asbestos, which may be in homes built up to 1990. Health hazards may result from exposure to lead-based paints in older materials and copper chromium arsenic (CCA) treated timber. For information on the dangers of asbestos, lead-based paint and CCA treated timber and tips for dealing with these materials contact your local council's Environmental Health Officer. You can also use a simple test kit from Bunnings to indicate the presence of lead-based paint.