DIY brush guards! Make your own brush guards! Cheap Brush guard tutorial! (Big brushes, tiny brushes and a angled eye liner brush!)

Brush guards are great - after washing your brushes you can really get the water out of them by placing your brushes upside down while keeping the shape intact. They're also great for travel too, so your brushes don't get squished in transit. I'm too cheap to buy brush guards, particularly with the amount of brushes I have, so I DIY them. You can buy the mesh on Ebay for extremely cheap, I think I ordered 1m from China for 99p, so it took a month but hey, it arrived.

I don't think I'm the first to do this - if someone else has done it then by all means go for it. A quickie post on how I did it and that's all from me folks!

You'll need thread, a needle, scissors and the brushes you wanna make guards for. If you only want to use guards for big brushes, then you won't need anything but scissors and you can slide your brushes through straight away.

I've used the mesh on a variety of brush sizes, the DIY will cover how I made a guard for a tiny tiny eco tools eye brush, and a zoeva angled liner brush.

The angled eye liner brush, due to to it's shape, will be cut differently and won't be as tight as other brush guards, further explanation below.

1.  Cut enough mesh to cover the head of the brush.

2. Cut the mesh at an angle, so the largest part will be the part covering the brush head.

3. Get sewing! Doesn't have to be nice or neat, just poke the needles through the mesh holes and bind the mesh together firmly so the mesh doesn't come apart and can take a brush being pushed through.

 4. You end up with a thing that looks like this.

5. Slide the brush into the mesh starting from the bottom of the brush, and there you have it. The angled brush shouldn't be squished up and should be able to be placed upside down for drying without the brush falling through. If it does fall through, it means you need to sew it tighter. Better tighter than looser when sewing these - if it's too tight then you can just stretch the mesh a little.

6. Leftover mesh? 

7. Make a tiny brush guard!

8. See how thin it is in comparison to the brush? (Travel sized tiny brush by the way.)

9. But it fits perfectly cause of the stretchy - ness! With normal brushes you can just make the guards as tight as possible - the angled brush is an exception because it's flat, so you don't want to squish up the sizes and deform the brush! That's why I made the guard flatter and a little bit looser than my other guards. 

10. Ta da! Perfect for putting your brushes in to dry after washing!

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DIY - How to make lace edged/trimmed cropped leggings/shorts

Hey guys, I was scouring Ebay for some lace trimmed shorts, when I realised that I could easily do it myself! I happened to have some 3/4 leggings sitting in my drawer and after a short trip to get some lace, I ended making some pretty decent leggings. Leggings nowadays can be pretty cheap, and a metre of lace isn't expensive either. Both of these together are much cheaper than the £7+ leggings on Ebay.

What you need:

• Leggings
• Pins
• Sewing machine (or you could hand sew) with appropriate thread colour matching the leggings
• Lace (1m or more, my leggings are  a size small, so it may be safer toe go with 2m)
• Ruler/measuring tape
• Pen/chalk to mark your clothing
• Scissors

Spread out the leggings so there are no folds or overlaps.

Take your pen/chalk and mark a straight line across both legs where you want your leggings to be cut. 

(Bear in mind that these will be folded up and sewn later on, so you may want to make it 3/4cm longer.) 

Taking your pins, pin across the line of each leg.

Make sure to pin through both layers of each leg.

Take your scissors and cut along the line ( don't worry if you cut a cm or two under)

Your leggings should look like this once both cut.

Remove the pins

Make sure the ends are straight, if you've cut a bit wonky you can straighten them up with scissors here.

Now turn the leggings inside out.

Take your pen again, and measure 2/3cm above the edge. Then draw a straight line of that height above the cut across the leg. Do this to both legs.

Using the lines you have drawn as a guideline, fold up each hem of each leg and pin the edges down.(Only pin through one layer, and pin all the way around each leg.)

To make sure that both legs are even, fold the leggings like this - if they match it means they are even. If they aren't even, you can adjusts the folds of each leg.

Take your leggings and sew up the hems you've just made with a sewing machine or by hand. Remove pins as you go along.

You should end up with legs that look like this.

Both hems sewn up.

 Check to make sure both legs are even.

Taking your lace (or even ribbon, whichever you prefer to attach)

 Pin the edge of the lace to the edge of the leggings. (You don't need to measure the lace, you can just sew until the lace meets where you started sewing.)

When using the sewing maching press the foot down to clamp the lace and the legging.

Do this step quite slowly, making sure the edge of the lace is sewn to the edge of the hem throughout.

 When the lace meets where you started, you can sew both lace edges together.

After sewing both legs, the hems should look similar like this.

Turn your leggings inside out, and you're done.

Many thanks for reading guys!

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DIY - How to make belt loops for trousers/pants

I recently bought some great tailored shorts from Ebay, but they were  little loose, so instead of making them smaller I added some belt loops. This saves on resewing if my size changes in the future. Here I used some spare velvet ribbon I had lying around, you can use anything you want providing it's washable and can be sewn.

Stuff you need:

• Item of clothing you want to sew
• Pen/chalk - something to mark your clothing with
• Pins
• Material you want to use for the loops
• Thread
• Needles
• Sewing machine (optional, you can hand sew instead)
• Ruler/measuring tape to measure where you want to mark your clothing

How to:

Measure out  on your clothing where you want the loops to go. I didn't have any chalk so I used a whiteboard pen to mark out where I needed the loops to go.

Here, you can see where I've marked out the line, and I did this 5 times - 2 on the front, 3 on the back. The pen is noticeable, but not too bright. You can use any colour that you like, just make sure it comes off in the wash.

 I then cut out 5 strips (one for each line) each 6cm long (you made need longer/shorter) and I folded over each end and hand sewed them. Make sure to start and finish at the back, so the knots don't show.

Here's what they should look like on the front and back.

Now pin each strip onto each line you made, and make sure to adjust when necessary, as the lines are only guidance and may not be 100% accurate. I spent a good few minutes adjusting the placement of each strip.

Use a sewing machine to sew each strip on accurately. (If you don't know how to use a sewing machine there are some great YouTube videos out there or you can just hand sew.)

Final product:

Thanks for reading guys!

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