Tee over at Green Isle Crafts recently posted a very important article which she has kindly given me permission to reproduce here -

Save Your Paint Water Save the Environment

Acrylic paint is AWESOME because it’s soap and water clean up. However, that doesn’t mean you should pour it down the sink. Chemicals in the paint are not always good for you so we should try to avoid getting them in the ground water as much as possible.

“Great Tee. How am I supposed to clean my brushes??”

Rethink, Reuse and Evaporate.

Rethink the way you clean your brushes. I have two systems and the first is the one I’ve been using the longest… and most often.

Tee’s Tip: Clean your brush less often. You don’t have to clean between each color, work those colors together and blend them into your page for exciting and unexpected results

Tee’s Two Jar Brush Cleaning System:

Dirty Water – this jar has about 1/2” water and two drops of gentle dish soap
Clean Water – this is plain water with about 3/4 to 1” of water

Four steps to clean brushes with Tee’s Two Jar Brush System:

1. Before swishing the brush in the jar of water, wipe off the excess on another page in your journal, inside a phone book and then on a paper towel (or scrap of fabric like I do).
2. Then swish the brush in the dirty jar
3. Squeeze out the dirty water on the paper towel or rag
4. Swish in the clean water

Done! Your brushes are clean. Less paint goes into the jar because you took most of it off before you cleaned your brush. And at the end of the day:

1. Use the dirty water (see below) or dispose of in the Evaporative Bucket (also below).
2. Pour the “clean water” into your “dirty water” jar, add two drops of gentle dish soap
3. Add a small amount of water to your clean water jar

Now you are all set for tomorrow~

Tee’s Color Coded Brush Cleaning:

1. Get several jars and fill all of them with 1/2” water
2. Before swishing the brush in the jar of water, wipe off the excess on another page in your journal, inside a phone book and then on a paper towel (or scrap of fabric like I do).
3. Clean blue paint in one, red in another, yellow in another.. etc..
4. Rinse the brush in a separate jar of “clean” water

That’s it. You have jars filled with color washes. Use them, see below. (I only use this one when I want a special colored wash)

“Ok… Great Tee.. but you said not to pour the water down the drain. What do I ‘do’ with the leftover?”

Oh yes.. now the good bits~ Reuse the paint.

Color Washes – Use the washes to get rid of the dreaded white page syndrome. You know.. the book is new, the page is blank and I can’t do anything to it because of that. Swish those washes of color on there and boom~ No more white pages.
Shadows – use the dark, every-color-imaginable one in a waterbrush for making shadows
Color Mist – pour into spray bottles to spritz color onto your page. You just made your own. Add perfect pearls for Glimmer Mist.

Evaporative Bucket:

And.. when all is said and done and you still have dirty water to rid yourself of.. Evaporate it… Pour it into an Evaporative Bucket. (this tip came from Kevin Tobin of Golden)

Take a bucket and put some sand in there. Put it in your garage, on your back porch.. or under a low hanging eve. You want to avoid rain getting into your bucket. When you pour your dirty water in, the sand traps the paint and the water evaporates. Good for the environment and easy as can be. (no washing the sink after you’ve poured the paint water in)

So, thank you Tee for such an informative article. If you have enjoyed these ideas, please let your fellow artists know by sharing a link to this post – it is important information to get out there…