Random Acts of Craftiness: Copper Pipe Make-up Brush Holder

This month's random act of craftiness challenge was to make an original creation with odds and ends from the hardware store. I have wanted a holder for my make-up brushes so I set out to find something that would work. I drove over to ReStore and found a beautiful copper pipe for $1.50. It even had some verdigris patches which gave it more personality.

My brushes were in a copper pail with the rest of my make-up but they kept getting lost in the shuffle.

Every morning I had to empty the whole bucket and lay everything out on the counter then put it all away when I was finished (which rarely happened). Everything usually stayed piled on the counter because it had to go back in such a specific order. The bigger items in the middle, smaller items around, then the brushes filled in the spaces.

Now I don't have to worry about the brushes getting damaged because they're next to the pail instead of in it! Woohoo!

I started out using a hack saw to cut my pipe. It was a long and unhappy process. At the end of my patience with sawing I opened a hole about 1/3 of the way around the pipe, stuck in tin snips and cut the rest of the way around. That resulted in a very uneven edge but it was kind of artsy so I left it. I just won't let kids use my make-up any time soon. After the frustration of the hacksaw and the tin snips I decided to bend the final piece of pipe in half.

I arranged the pipe pieces in a pretty way and hot glued the end pieces to the middle bent piece. Then I stuck in my brushes and viola! A beautiful solution to a first world problem.

It probably would have been easier if I would have gone to a normal hardware store and got pre-cut pieces of pipe but then it wouldn't have been as full of frustration and cursing whimsy and personality.

Check out what everyone else made here!