Project #18 - Paint Santa Ornament

Since I couldn't get to Bunnings to get the liquid nails for the table runner, I made a start on painting the Santa my friend Tristan gave to me last year instead.


The Santa is made out of plaster and was purchased at The Plaster Fun House. Usually you paint the plaster ornaments in the store and they put a varnish over it before you leave. While I admit that it is fun to spend hours there painting an ornament, there are a couple of problems with the setup at The Plaster Fun House that mainly stem from the fact that the establishment is designed primarily for kids:

• The chairs are tiny and give you back ache after a while
• All the paints are watered down and contain a 'rainbow of colours' in every pot
• While they sell coffee in various forms they are no means a coffee house. I suggest taking your own thermos unless you like drinking something that tastes like muddy water
  
• There are plenty of temper tantrums and kids crying over paint colours and ornaments, so wear earplugs.
  

As I was given this ornament to paint at home, I didn't experience any of the above problems. I also didn't need to use acrylic paints either as Matty used to paint Warhammer 40k miniatures, so I had an array of top quality painting colours available to me for use. With colours such as 'snot green', 'gore red', 'bleached bone' and 'skull white', who would want to use boring acrylic colours:

These paints (while they are more expensive than acrylic at around $6 a pot) cover incredibly well. Due to the ornament being made out of plaster, there were a lot of imperfections in the surface, however, so I had to 'over paint' the lines to make sure that all surfaces were painted. Here is a picture of santa before he got eyeballs (scary, huh!):

To say that painting the ornament was fiddly would be an understatement. There were many times where I almost gave up hope. I still have not finished it, as there are parts that need to be touched up, but here are some pictures of what it currently looks like:


and here is a picture of the toys in Santa's sack (my favourite part of the ornament):


Once I have touched it up and varnished it, I will post another picture of it completed (hopefully that will be this weekend!)

Here is a link to the other post on painting the Santa ornament:

• Project #18 - Paint Santa Ornament (Update #2 - Finished)