Howdy gang! I've had some success using Nail Polish Enamels for my boxes long before "swirling" became the trend.
Sand the entire box with some wet or dry 220 and knock down any casting remnants attached to
your box and it's lid. We're also giving the metal some "tooth" for the paint to hang on to.
I put a coat of gray or white flat primer down after wiping every millimeter of the box and lid with Naphtha. Remove any manufacturing oils and contaminants thoroughly.
This is the most important step of any paint job, the "prep".
Failure at this stage cannot be corrected regardless how many successive coats of paint are applied.
After a day of the primer drying check the box for spots that may need to be sanded down and
filled with body filler. These BUD boxes rarely have any savage casting marks and my technique
is so layered with pigments no one can spot the valleys. You'll then put a bowl of water in the microwave
for 3 minutes. Pull the bowl out & drop the rattle can that is your base color upright in the bowl. Submerge ONLY the bottom 3rd of the spray can! This stuff would love to blow up, you can feel Murphy and his attorneys hovering. So don't go overboard in this area you mad scientist types!
In a minute or two depending on the weather, pull the can out and immediately start shaking the can.
If the pigment's the right temperature you'll feel it heat the part of the can where you're holding it.
The base colors I prefer are any of the opalescent, i.e. 'Pearl' colors as it makes whatever
pigment you apply over it have a shifting background. With the can contents all mixed and
volatile as hell it's easy to get the paint to come out with all the
opalescent product in tow.
{In the Winter I heat the box prior to painting as well.}
Check the wickedly intense chromas available in the even the cheaper Nail Polish. Beautiful deep &
rich pigments that no spray paint comes in! I prefer the dag nasty brand that Walgreen sells. I
never used up a whole bottle on a box yet. Perhaps it's a result of thinning it.
Reading the ingredients of the Nail Polish stated that the 2nd component was Nitro Cellulose
lacquer. I mixed the straight pigment with thinner to a milk like consistency and took an eyedropper
&
commence-to-flingin' across the box almost at the same plane as the top. You only need
a couple colors of this pigment to have a nice finished product.[Providing you've picked out colors
that'll work nicely with your base.] Looking at the current Landgraff boxes it seems his painter
is working in Nail Polish too!
[Just the top gets his treatment and the sides are masked to eventually get a monochromatic
finish. Nail polish by the pint must be prohibitively expensive!]
I usually finish up with a couple of coats of clear gloss enamel and call it a day.
In the future I'm going to try thinning this stuff for use in an airbrush and raise the FX painting bar
a wee bit.
Remember to "have fun" but above all be safe. No open flames around paint, it's thinners, soaked rags, etc..(At least until you see my video how to
flame paint!
)
The loaf you save may be your own!
Noel {I don't wear a respirator to paint} Grassy
Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 12:08 pm
