Custom Makeup Brush Holders

A while ago a friend of ours, Brittnie, contacted us about a making a custom piece.  The piece needed to be designed to display a special set of makeup brushes, which presented a particular challenge because we did not have the brushes on hand.  The brushes are the Wizard Wands Collection by Story Book Cosmetics and have bumps and notches throughout them that make it so they’re not a standard makeup brush size.  Brittnie sent over some pictures for sizing the brushes and she suggested designing them to fit a standard pencil. 

I used the image to help me set the other design constraints and worked up a design for approval using Autodesk Fusion 360.

With Brittnie signing off on the design, I began work on cutting the shapes out on the bandsaw. Brittnie had both the gun metal and the rose gold sets, so I decided using two different woods that contrasted the two different brush sets was the best idea.

Originally, I chose a piece of walnut and a piece of soft maple from our family tree farm in Missouri. Unfortunately during assembly, I dropped one of the soft maple pieces, and due to some poor grain direction decisions, it broke in a way that would not be repairable. This forced me to start over on the maple piece with a piece of hard maple. This ultimately turned out to be a better choice for the piece because the hard maple added some much needed strength to the thin areas of the piece.

Once assembled, the pieces were sanded to 400 grit and finished with a clear satin polyurethane.

I really had to think outside of the box with this project. It was an opportunity to take a customer’s idea through the design process and into reality. Thank you Brittnie for allowing me to do this project, I really enjoyed it!