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I have seen nail polish painted jewelry floating around the bloggy world lately. The other day I was digging through my box of “unusable jewelry.” It basically contains all the jewelry I think has upcycling potential. In my box I have a bunch of tarnished jewelry. I’ve tried cleaning it before and it always gets tarnished too quickly. None of it is really worth anything so I gave up trying to keep it shiny.
I spotted a necklace and two pairs of earrings that seemed like they would be perfect to add some color to. I am a big fan of the colorful jewelry that is popular right now so I decided to try painting with nail polish. I wanted to match up some of the cabochon jewelry I made the other day so that helped me to make my color choices. I found these three colors at Target.
I wanted to paint two necklaces and two pairs of earrings. One of the pairs of earrings got slightly deconstructed since I always felt like the were two heavy in my ears.
I started painting. I put on around four coats and then it started getting really tacky when I tried to add any more coats so I let them dry for a week. I’m sure they didn’t need to dry that long but I was busy and didn’t have time to come back to them. I applied a couple more coats until I was satisfied with the coverage
I attempted to paint the chain on one of the necklaces. I figured I wasn’t going to wear it like it was so there was no risk to try it. It was a big fail. The chain got really stiff so I pitched it and figured I would make up a new and better chain.
I really liked how the orange came out. It was the perfect color and the finish was really shiny. I felt like the green was too matte so I put on a coat of clear polish to give it more shine.
I am pretty pleased with how they all turned out. I breathed life into these pieces I had no intention of ever wearing again. Plus it was much cheaper than buying all these pieces from the store and I still have lots of nail polish leftover.
If I was going to try and paint anymore jewelry I would want to try spray painting. I think it might put a more even coat on everything. Maybe that will be a future project 🙂
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