Spray Paint Craze!

The other day I had to spray paint three different things for the Susan costume. First, I had to spray paint the grommets that I just got in the mail. They only had gold grommets, and Susan's are more of a dull color. I used Valspar Odds 'n' Ends Fast Dry Enamel in Pewter. You can see the grommets at the top are upside down and are gold. The ones closer to the bottom of the picture are the pewter ones. I really wanted something a bit more coppery, but I could only find BRIGHT COPPER!!!! and didn't want that. So I figured pewter was the next best thing.


Then, I decided to buy some dowel rods to make the arrows. Those got painted with Krylon Indoor/Outdoor Gloss in Equestrian. I didn't realize that the little white thing in the spray nozzle distributed the paint more evenly. I thought it was a stopper and removed it, and ended up with essentially a steady stream of paint. Well, I figured it out after I finished one coat (the rods covered up pretty quickly.) For the second coat, I put the sprayer back on the nozzle, but the damage was done. There were little raised bumps all over the arrows from the dripping paint. I ended up sanding them with some really fine sandpaper. (By the way, be CAREFUL if you're going to sand a dowel rod - I almost set my hand on fire! I'm lucky I don't have burns on my fingers.) I'll try spraying them again tomorrow just to give them a second coat. The next step will be to add some gold bands, a cap on the end of the arrow, and I think I'll fashion one arrow tip out of clay. That will be for photo ops only. The other arrows will be permanently fixed inside the quiver.

Finally, I bought a bunch of 4" arrow fletching replacements at Dick's Sporting Goods. These are going to eventually be glued to the arrows. Half of the 36 feathers that I bought were green, and half were white. I spray painted them red using Krylon Short Cuts Red Pepper. Have you any idea how HARD it is to spray paint these things? First of all, they weigh just about nothing. Second, they are meant to fly through the air, so of course they FLEW all over the place when I started spraying! I decided to do most of the feathers, even though I only need about fifteen, just because I knew some of them would get really messed up. They would flip over and get the wet paint on other feathers that were already wet, and when I'd flip them back over the paint would get the impression of my finger (I wore latex gloves, BTW.) At least, if I don't have enough decent ones, I can always scrap the paint off and try again.

All in all, I am quite pleased with how all my painting turned out. I'm also excited that I was able to work on little piddly parts of the costume while working up the courage to finish the corset. That will be my big challenge tomorrow - hemming and grommeting the corset! I figure it's better to make it a tad too small than a tad too big; after all, I can always loosen the laces if it's too small, but I can only tighten them so much if it's too big!