Keep your brushes soft and feeling new by washing them after every use. Just put them under warm running water and soap away with your hands. Make sure you take out everything on the bristles that would make them crusty and hard. If you have stiff brushes, you can try to putting them in a cup of fabric softener for a few hours and they'll be back to their soft selves.



If your projects involve a lot of painting, then try to cover your working area with newspaper to keep the paint from getting where it's not supposed to go. If you're working with glue or thick paints, you might want to double or even triple the newspaper layers to make sure that they don't bleed through to your surface.

If you want to remove glue stains from your clothes, or your furniture or wherever you don't want glue on, you can try using some rubbing alcohol. It softens the glue up and dissolves it easily. Rubbing alcohol is good for glue stains that have already hardened too.

If you want your bottles to unscrew easily, you can try covering them up with some plastic wrap first before screwing the lid in. You'll soon discover that this prevents your previously opened paint or glue bottles from crusting up and it will also make opening the bottles a lot less harder.

Are you trying to paint small items and finding it harder and harder to hold them as you go along? Try looping a small piece of masking or clear tape and placing it on a pencil's eraser's end. Use this to hold the little item you are trying to paint and paint away. If you want to dry it, just leave the pencil in a cup or any pencil holder.