Thursday, October 15, 2015

Feeling dippy

Back in April, when I experimented with dipping vases in paint, m1k1 requested that I do some for her and even offered a stash of vases to work with. She dropped them off to me when she visited last month, and I finally made time to play with then (and the nail varnish I bought in The Blue Mountains).

(Because of course it's easier to just dip the vases in a pot of paint but I wanted to see how it worked if I combined the idea of using nail varnish to paint vases with the concept of dipping. Just to make life difficult. But I figured that if I'd already spent $2.30 a bottle on nail varnish it would be silly driving all the way across town to buy extra paint colours as well. And besides, since I'd been given 12 vases I had the ability to stuff a few of them up and still have enough to revert to the painting option...)
Slection of dolls' house miniature white vases, bottles of nail varnish and paint and plastic containers on a cutting mat.
I gathered the following together for my experiment:

Vases (of course)
Bottles of nail varnish
Small plastic containers to pour the nail varnish into for dipping (I hoped I could pour the extra back into the bottles at the end)
Blu Tack
Baking paper
Paper towel
Three paint brushes and six dolls' house miniature white vases arranged on a cutting mat.
plus paint brushes with bottoms big enough to fit fairly snuggly into the mouths of the vases.

And to add to the fun, I decided to see if using masking tape and spray paint would work as well, so I also gathered a roll of masking tape, a pair of scissors and a can of spray paint.
Container of dolls' house miniature white vases, a roll of masking tape, a pair of scissors and a can of spray paint arranged on a piece of baking paper.
First up, I tested the spray paint theory and wrapped the top of the vase with a length of the masking tape (rubbing the edge with my fingernail to make sure it was firmly attached along the bottom edge) and took it outside to spray.
White dolls' house miniature vase, half-taped with masking tape, about to be spray painted.
(This was the method I used for my dipped stool.)
White dolls' house miniature vase, half-taped with masking tape, being spray painted.
White dolls' house miniature vase, half-taped with masking tape and  spray painted.
Hmmm... not looking good so far. But I put it aside to dry and returned to the nail varnishing.
White dolls' house miniature vase, with the end of a paint brush blue tacked into it, on a piece of baking paper with a bottle of nail varnish, a small plastic container and a piece of paper towel.
First, I placed the end of a paint brush into the mouth of the vase, using blu tack to hold it firmly in place (and checking that everything was straight).
White dolls' house miniature vase, with the end of a paint brush blue tacked into it, on a piece of baking paper next to a small plastic container half-filled with gold nail varnish.
I filled the container with enough nail varnish to cover the height of the vase I wanted coloured (making a guess at how much extra height would be achieved when I placed the vase in the container.) 
White dolls' house miniature vase, with the end of a paint brush blue tacked into it, dipped into a small plastic container half-filled with gold nail varnish.
And dipped the vase in the varnish, twisting slightly as I removed it
White dolls' house miniature vase, with the end of a paint brush blue tacked into it, half-dipped with gold nail varnish, on a paper towel.
before blotting the base a couple of times on the paper towel
Two gold-dipped dolls- house white vases.
and leaving it to dry while I dipped a second vase.
Workbench with baking paper and a paper towel dotted with bits of nail varnish, with nail varnish bottles and dipped dolls' house vases in the background.
I poured (most of) the left-over polish back into the bottle, and repeated the process with the other two colours and the rest of the vases I had chosen.

And then I got carried away.
White dolls' house vase, with the end of a paintbrush blu tacked into it and painted with gold spots.
Experimenting with using a toothpick dipped in the varnish to add spots to vase (quite successfully)
White dolls' house vase painted with gold stripes, on a workbench with bottles of nail varnish and other, dipped, vases in the background.
and a small paintbrush to add stripes to another (not so successfully).
Selection of white dolls' house vases decorated with nail varnish.
I varnished the inside of the stripy vase, andwhile I was on a roll—made a puddle of varnish on the baking paper and dipped the lips of the vases into it, once again using a twisting motion to get even coverage.
Three white dolls' house vases decorated with gold nail varnish: one spotted, one striped and one dipped, each with gold rims.
And that spray-painting 'failure'? I added another coat, waited for it to dry and removed the masking tape:
White dolls' house vase, dipped with aqua paint.
(Just don't look too closely at the back of it, OK?)

So, in conclusion:
1. Dipping in nail varnish works, but is much more fiddly that using paint (as you can dip straight into the paint jar rather than messing around with decanting the nail varnish), and the nail varnish is gloopier, making it harder to get a straight line at the top.
2. Spray painting also works, but be careful not to put too much on each coat (my problem was that I was trying to take photos as well as paint, so my first coat was too thick). Placing the masking tape on straight, making sure the edges are well attached, and prising it off when the paint is dry can be fiddly.

5 comments:

  1. I just know if I tried this it'd be a disaster waiting to happen but I love the results you got, a big fan of the dotty one :)

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  2. Love the dipping. I bet they'd look fab in the contest build!

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  3. You did better than my attempt. Stupidly tried to hold the vase with my fingers so first attempt got completely dipped. Gotta say I like the nail varnish variations though; it actually looks like a glaze =0)

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  4. Beautiful! :D You make it look easy!

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  5. Kitty and Kat: Contest build? *twitch* *whimper*
    Pepper: Silly. Try again (I'm sure you'll come up with a major improvement to mine!)
    otterine: Thank you: although it wasn't easy holding the vase in the paint while taking a photo with the other hand :-/

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