Pastry Brush Puppets

Our kitchen is being remodeled, which means everything that belongs in the kitchen is somewhere besides the kitchen. Our cabinets should be done soon (fingers crossed) so I've been going through the piles of kitchen stuff to organize it and weed out anything we don't need. I came across a pastry brush that was looking tired. We hadn't used it in years. I was going to throw it out, but moved it to the craft room instead. After a bit of experimentation, I turned my pastry brush into a pair of painted puppets. 

I made this gal on the concave side of the brush...

... and made this guy on the convex side. 

So I could use them to put on a puppet show... as long as they never appear in the same scene! Affiliate links below. 

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Pastry Brush Puppets

Materials: 

• old brush (paintbrush, pastry brush, etc)
• white gesso
• acrylic paint
• googly eyes
• glue

Steps: 

Mix a small amount of gesso with whatever color of paint you'd like your character's shirt to be. Paint this mix onto the handle of the brush. My brush had a white band across the top, so I opted to paint that the same color as the shirt. 

Mix gesso with pink to make the mouth and with your desired flesh tone for the nose. 

Glue the googly eyes in place, then paint on the eyebrows and any facial hair. They can match the color of the bristles, or not. 

Now it's time for a haircut. The bristles of my old pastry brush were surprisingly difficult to style. I glued two chunks of 'hair' on either side of the woman's face, then cut the rest of the hair short with some heavy-duty scissors. When you look at the man, you only see the short hair. 

These were a lot of fun to make. The next time I have paintbrushes that are no longer serving their purpose, I'm definitely turning them into more puppets.