Hand-Painted Rings

Nothing says "holiday weekend" like a good yard sale.

To me, yard sales are a lot like thrift stores; you never know what you're going to find. Inevitably, you're going to find the things that the previous owner really didn't have any use for: old children's books, an outdated television set, those ugly vases that just don't look right in the living room... But every now and then, you'll find something really quirky at a sale that you just have to add to your collection of oddities. When I stumbled across this nifty table-top instrument, I was more than happy to pay the suggested $3. 

This thing is so much fun - well worth the money.

Naturally, I was looking for some blog-worthy projects to go along with this quirky find. About a block away from the first sale, I stumbled across exactly what I needed!

This bag of 40 brass rings (size 8) was perfect for an adventure in hand-painted jewelry. As much as I love visual art, I'm not the greatest painter, so I decided to go looking for supplies that would be simple and easy to work with.

I ended up with a set of craft smart paint pens, a microperm ultra-fine permanent pen, two bottles of nail polish (that included a thin tip inside of the cap), and a small tray of nail art decorations. To start, I did a lot of experimenting; my big worry was that the paint from the paint pens wouldn't stick to the brass. After covering a lot of the rings in messy blobs of paint and tiny beads that wouldn't stay, I managed to paint some simple designs that I liked. First I laid down a page of newspaper and wiped the fingerprints off of the ring.

After that, I had to find the best way to hold the ring while I painted it. Luckily the paint dried quickly! There were many designs I tried that did not turn out the way I'd hoped (flowers that turned to blobs, letters that were unreadable, etc.) but I did end up with a few that I liked:

Obligatory Harry Potter reference.

I attempted steampunk gears.

I decided to try using the tip of the nail polish cap to scrape letters into the paint. It ended up looking like this:

All in all, I had a lot of fun experimenting.

I decided to seal the rings with clear nail polish (a tip I learned on pinterest... where else?) but unfortunately, it smeared the paint. Hopefully I can find something else to keep the paint from rubbing off of the ring.

After this simple project, I learned to love my new set of paint pens. I can't wait to find another craft for them!