Plastic Lid Flower, Made with Apple Barrel Paint Pens

 I've been playing with the new Apple Barrel paint pens!

I'm a Plaid Ambassador, which means I get to try out all sorts of new goodies from one of my favorite companies ever! Affiliate links here and throughout the post. 

I received two sets of Apple Barrel fine-tip paint pens (the Basic colors and the Neon set). According to the package, they're intended for use on fabric, wood, paper, glass, rock, metal, and much more. I decided to swatch my colors on three surfaces: newspaper, a plastic lid, and aluminum foil. The colors were beautiful on all the surfaces and the coverage was excellent. 

Here are some swatches with the neon colors. Fabulous!

After I took that photo, I ran my finger across all of the swatches to see how well they dried on each surface. I'm happy to report that they were all perfect! No smearing, nothing. 

But that was with a few minutes of drying time. What would happen if I made dots in quick succession, allowed no drying time, and then rubbed my finger through them? This: 

By the time I made the 8th dot (purple), the first five dots were completely dry and did not smear when I rubbed them. Impressive! Green, which was the 6th dot, was dry on the outside but not in the inside in just the time it took for me to make blue and purple dots. Not bad at all! I didn't expect the paint to set as quickly as it did. 

Time to move on to my project. I grabbed a random plastic lid (because craft bloggers hoard plastic lids in their craft rooms) and taped the lid over this pattern by Bella Savoy. And then I started dotting. 

Dot, dot, dot, dot... I had intended to fill in the whole design, but changed my mind and stopped at this point. Such a cute flower!

I flipped the lid over and colored the back of the flower and leaves with a white paint pen. This really helped the colors pop. Then I colored around the outline with sky blue. I used microtip scissors to cut out the shape, leaving me with this: 

Not bad for a plastic lid! I love trash-to-treasure projects like this. And I love the Apple Barrel Paint Pens. I used them for a second project right away; I'll share that tomorrow.