Steampunk My Gun!

If you're like me, you love watching youtube tutorials to learn something new! You can learn how to do pretty much anything from youtube!

Anyway, the other day I was checking out how to make a steampunk gun.
(Not that I needed one, but I thought it might be a skill that would come in handy later on in life.) 

Needless to say, after watching the tutorials, I wanted to go out and get a Nerf gun and try my hand at this new technique!

Here's the completed version!

Not bad for my first try. This isn't a nerf gun, it's a squirt gun (cost me like $3). I still need to take off the plastic cap and cover it with something else, but I like it!

 Here's what you do to make your own!

Grab some:

Black Paint

Gold/Brown/Silver paint (metallic brands work best)

Sand paper

Your fingers (don't forget those!)

Newspaper

Paintbrushes

Gears (or other embellishments)

STEP ONE

Peel any stickers off and try sand off any toy brand engravings. 

 STEP TWO

Lay down your newspaper to protect the table. Then paint the entire thing BLACK!

This will help with the antique look in a minute.

As you can see, I left the green tank green, I thought it looked cool the way it was.

STEP THREE

Dip your finger in the brown paint and gently rub it all over the gun. It looks like rust!

Be sure to skim over the cracks and creases, makes it look older.

At this point I glued on a few gears because I wanted them to be the same color as the entire gun. 

If you want your gears (or whatever decoration you chose) to stand out more, you can glue them on later.

STEP FOUR

Now dip your small paintbrush into the silver or gold and go to town. 

The cool thing is that you get to decide what colors you want where!

I used both silver and gold, highlighting some key parts in silver and leaving some of the black to show through, giving it more character. play around with it.

(Remember, if you mess up, you can always paint the whole thing black again and start over)

STEP FIVE

Dip your finger in the brown again and go over the top once more (to add a bit more "rust"). 

My gold made it look like a newer gun. To make a more antique gun you can mix a bit of brown into the gold before painting it.

STEP SIX

Touch up.

Remember, it doesn't have to be perfect.

Mistakes add character. ;)

Nevertheless, I'm going to go back and highlight a few more areas.

Don't forget!!!

Have a little fun with it! 

This took me a few hours, because i'm a flipping perfectionist and I was making up a few things as I went. 

If you need a different tutorial for different styles, head on over to youtube!

Now I'm armed and dangerous...with water at least haha