Hey y'all, I've been doing tonnes of sewing in my ill state and it made me realise how much I love my beautiful pink sewing machine and so I thought I would post a DIY on how I painted it because luckily I took a tonne of pictures. The pictures are a little bit scratchy but I hope you like it. It got me thinking about all the patterns you could stencil on; if you have a go please email me a pic. I am dying to see a metallic one!
A sewing machine
Spray paint
Lots of parcel tape
A scalpel
1) Give your machine a good old clean because any dirt or grit that is covered by the paint will make it lok a little gross and runny and wierd.
2) Now is the most important bit, the masking. You will need to cover any dials, buttons, knobs or vents which serve a purpose because spray paint will gunk these up and stop your machine working. Go especially mntal with the whole foot and lever aera, you don't want a speck of paint messing up that mechanism. I also covered up any joins or seams that my machine had just incase. To mask cover the area liberally with tape and then use a scalpel to cut a neater outline for your masked area. Then push down your new edge to double check that no cheeky paint is going to creep in there.
3) Now spray away! Spray in a well ventilated area making sure to spray little and often. The mistake I used to make loads with spraying things is I would start off nice and controlled with a sensible thin layer and then think "hmm that doesn't look so bright." and then go mental with the spray until it was thick with massive globs of drippy paint. Argh! Just be patient and build up thin layers about every 10 minutes.
4) When you have achieved your colour you must play the waiting game. I know this is boring but leave your paint to dry for a minimum of 4 hours. Spray paint is sneaky because it becomes touch dry very quickly but under that bone dry surface there is tacky paint ready to ooze out and spoil your effect. Similarly don't worry if right now your finish looks a tiny bit mottled and gloopy, it's still got drying to go and with end up beautiful and matt.
5) Using your scalpel carefully remove your tape and clean up any rough edges.
6) Keep your machine in a well ventilated area for 24 hours as there will still be some drying going on in there somewhere. I was silly enough to rest mine against some tissue paper and had to re-do the back as when I woke up it was all stuck on. Sigh.
