Retro Plastic Bottle Picture Frame

Step 3 Paint the plastic shapes

This is another step that I screwed up on in my creating process- I painted the shapes after assembly but it would be much easier to do it before putting it all together so I'm doing one of those corny "do as I say not as I do" cliche things....

Paint all the shapes white first- I use acrylic paints but this project would be well suited to spray paint, although the downside is the drying time is longer with spray paint- acrylic dries fast unless you add retarder to it. House paint would work for this fine if you have that lying around- basically whatever you've got, use it up!

Then paint the shapes in colors that will look good with the painting- probably colors that already are in there- this is where real acrylic paints come in handy because you can mix them to make any color you want. I actually mix my acrylic with Elmer's glue as a cheap medium to help it apply more smoothly and make the paint spread farther, and it also makes blending colors easier to do, also gives a nice even gloss to the finish. My general mix is about 2/3 glue to 1/3 paint but you can use less or more depending how opaque you want it.