Crisis Compact Restoration - A for Effort! C for execution.

A few weeks ago I bought a Rainbow Moon Chalice/Holy Grail that had some light damage to the base. I did a restoration on it to recover the original pink color and made a little tutorial about it. You can see it on deviantART here.

Seeing as that went well, I decided to try something a little harder. I bought a IRS Crisis Heart Compact with chipped paint to see if I could restore that. I bought some gold mirror finish chrome paint online and when I got the locket I look it apart and covered up the stuff I didn't want to paint. I started laying thin layers onto it on Saturday morning and did a new coats every 15 mins into the afternoon. By about 2 PM it was starting to look *really* good; not as reflective as the original surface, but still very pretty and very shiny.

I wish I'd taken a photo. :(

Once I was sure the last coat was dry, I grabbed some high gloss acrylic to seal it. Boy was that a Bad Idea. The acrylic had some kind of crazy reaction with the chrome as soon as it hit the surface - it congealed like sour milk hitting hot coffee. It made an instant, huge mess. Panic set it. I tried to wipe it away, clean it, clear it. Things congealed more, got stuck to the cloth, made clumps if goopy paint globs and blaaaah it was a MESS. And then some of it hardened into big lumps so I took fine sandpaper to get it off but I wasn't careful enough and the plastic was scratched all over.

I was SO depressed. I actually cried.

Subsequent layers of the chrome paint looked terrible. Every little lump and inconsistency shown with GLARING MOCKERY. "YOU SEE WHAT YOU DID TO ME? YOU SEE HOW YOU FAILED?!" D:

I moped around the house all day complaining how I'd totally ruined it and my project was a complete failure. I was a complete failure. It was a bad day. I got a bloody nose (probably from the spray paint?) I cut my finger on some glass. Totally unrelated. I cried more anyway.

Once I worked myself out of that funk I decided to try ordinary gold spray paint to see if I could salvage what was left.

This was the end result:












This is a comparison with an undamaged compact:















So it's certainly not as sparkly as it once was, but I don't think it looks bad and I'm glad I opted for the non-shiny plan B. It looks better to me than it did with the paint missing anyway :D

Since it's an IRS locket, I tested it out with my Kalidescope to make sure everything still worked. Lights and sounds, everything is a go! So even though it didn't work out as miraculously as my last go, I still consider it a mild success and I know that I will do better with the chrome paint the next time. ^o^