A teeny, tiny little clock

It is a really small clock! I received this from the lovely gals at Alpha Stamps. It's hand painted and here are some tips on how to go about painting one yourself.

First of all, with pot metal, which is what this is made out of, you need to give it a good scrubbing with something like Dawn or (if you wear gloves) Trisodium Phosphate, or TSP. Dawn is the mildest option, but basically you need to do this to get the mold release compound off of the metal or nothing you put on it will stick.
Here is a picture of the back of the clock and what the metal looks like after it's been scrubbed. I can feel the difference in the less slippery texture of the clock after scrubbing it with Dawn and an old toothbrush.

Having started life in a mold, there are some bits and raw edges that can be filed off to give the clock a smoother look. I used a couple of jewelry files to do a bit of this, but this thing is so tiny that I ended up leaving it (for the most part) as is. I filed off the most obvious sticky-outy bits but the other don't show up much and basically disappear when the paint goes on, so don't worry too much about it.

Here is the clock painted with a coat of gesso. I used this a ground for the rest of the paint. It gives the paint something to stick to and allows nice, bright color to come through as the white gesso is nicely reflective.

Using a number 2 round brush (it is very fine and has a stiffness in the bristles that allow for fine detail painting) I painted in the gold first.

Next, lay in the primary colors you've chosen for your clock. I wanted mine to be reminiscent of the fancy French ormalu clocks with the gold gilding. They sometimes had very bright enamel colors as well and that is what I was going for here.

You can see I decided to change the ring around the clock dial from gold to blue and painted the main skin color on the cherubs. They look like they need some serious sun screen!

Don't worry about correcting any mistakes yet unless you've streaked a big blob of color across your gold. All that can be corrected in a later step.
I started laying in the dark and light blue at this point as well.

I pretty much have all my color in at this point, including some darker pink shading on the cherubs skin and a couple of different greens on the wreath around the clock. I also painted the dial using an even finer brush and black paint.

Now is the time to go in and correct over brushing or adding color to spots you missed. You can see in the picture below, I need to add some gold to correct some over painted blue on the front base of the clock and add blue to a patch or two I missed toward the back.

The faces need to be touched up but I apologize that I don't have a picture for them....for some odd reason, my camera would not download that photograph. Perhaps the cherubs thought I was Paparazzi......

The supplies for this project are pretty simple and listed below. Thank you for dropping by!

SUPPLIES
Metal Victorian Cherub Mantel Clock

Numbers 2 and 3 round paint brush (use what you are comfortable with! A liner brush also works well, but I found for me, it was a bit too flexible)
Gesso (I used Liquitex white gesso)
Acrylic paints
Dawn dishwashing liquid
Old toothbrush
Files if you have them