ArtyBrush help

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but my ArtyBrush strokes are never crisp and clean like I see elsewhere. I watched Pam Trent do an ArtyBrush butterfly with gorgeous feathery edges. My attempts at that have been pathetic. I am using a 3/4 flat brush (green painted handle kind), loading the brush well (maybe too well?) and just wet enough that the bristles don't flake apart. Any help or tips would be SO appreciated! I have so many ArtyBrush cakes and want to be able to do fast pretty crowns for my princesses!

I hear ya!!! I'm a lefty too and have the same problem! For me my brush is always too wet so I end up with ABC puddle cake! THEN its too dry and I can never get the balance just right.
SO, what I do is I wet my brush really well and then I wipe just one side on the side of the bucket when I bring it up out of the water. then I load and if my brush is still a little dry when picking up the paint I then dip just the tip in the water and keep loading. I find that the ABC are too short and prefer the TAG splits. The extra length is handy especially for combating the puddle problems and gives you the extra room to really load the brush. The brush must be LOADED with paint.
Another thing that I've found with the ABC is that they are made of differnt brands of colour and I think this affects the products consistency. I recall a tute by heather banks that put forward the issue of how much water some brands require for activation compared to others.
As for the lefty technique - practise makes perfect! I've just had to (and I apologise for this sounding vague) work it out. There are some TAG tutes that I find handy as the designs are simple yet effective for starting out. look for tagbodyart on youtube. Hope that helps!

I got some really helpful tips from a video put out by the people who make TAG. They say that to re-wet and re-load your brush, only dip the very tip in as Beans suggested. And, if your bristles start to separate but there is still lots of paint in them, to spray the ferrule with water and it will run down into the bristles. These two tips have helped me the most. I'm still not that great with them and have been practicing like mad... I keep hoping that some day it will just "click".

I feel like I JUST got the hang of this. Load, load, load, load! It uses us way too much paint, but found I only got those clean lines when I really loaded with creamy, not wet paint. Load, let the brush dry just a bit, spray paint and then load again. This helps. I figured this out, when I kept using the same brush per cake at a party. DING! She can't possibly rinse those brushes out each time she reloads. Well--maybe she does, but it is a total waste of paint.

Not a debate!!! Just telling you what I found get better strokes.

Best of luck!

-Metina

Thank you so much, I appreciate the tips and support! Great reason to try some of the pretty TAG cakes, too!

Metina wrote:I feel like I JUST got the hang of this. Load, load, load, load! It uses us way too much paint, but found I only got those clean lines when I really loaded with creamy, not wet paint. Load, let the brush dry just a bit, spray paint and then load again. This helps. I figured this out, when I kept using the same brush per cake at a party. DING! She can't possibly rinse those brushes out each time she reloads. Well--maybe she does, but it is a total waste of paint.

Not a debate!!! Just telling you what I found get better strokes.

Best of luck!

-Metina

HeeHee! Metina... we're in the US, so we're ok w/ this technique

I totally agree Metina

Rebecca doesn't rinse her brushes, if I remember right from her classes I took.

Part of the problem I have is that I HAVE to use clean brushes so loading them up properly to use them on a gig means that I take too long and waste too much...

I do use them, but not as often as a lot of other people. Mostly I use them with sponges as I find it a bit easier to get enough loaded to apply it.