Pretty Nerf Guns

Though now I can call them ray guns.  That shoot darts.  Darts are worse than rays, aren't they?

So this is what a standard Nerf Maverick looks like, fresh out of the box:

It's not a bad color scheme, when your main goal is to make sure everybody knows that this is a toy.  But if you wanted to carry it around, e.g., the Steampunk World's Fair, it's just not pretty enough.

This is when the Rustoleum Hammered Spray Paints come in.

A few years ago I made this one:

The base coat is Bronze spray paint, with silver, brown, and gold accents.
 
And this summer I found myself agreeing to supply enough Nerf guns to run a small Nerf war.  So I went to Target and bought three Nerf Mavericks (and a giant box of fruit snacks.  Of course responsible adults go to Target and buy Nerf guns and fruit snacks).  I also picked up Silver and Brown paint colors.

I really like the look of the brown, especially after you give a light dusting of either Bronze or Silver and then add some acrylic accents.  This one's brown with a bronze dusting, bronze barrel, and Antique Copper accents.

Brown base, silver dusting, silver barrel.  The dusting gives the body just a hint of silver without being overwhelming.

Brown base, bronze dusting, and a combination of Antique Copper and a metallic green accents on the barrel.

This was originally some camo-green color and marketed as a Space Blaster.  I'm not sure why Space Blasters would come in camo green (I guess for fighting in all those Space Forests and Space Swamps).  But I went over with acrylic craft paints.  I'm having problems with the paint scraping off, so I'll probably end up sanding this down and repainting it. 

Part of the same set.  I haven't finished all the detail work on this one yet (or more accurately I haven't finished re-doing all the detail work, since when it just about done I decided to sand it down, hoping to decrease the paint-scraping problem).

I picked up a vintage Thermos lunchbox from a junk store.  It was black and I'm pretty sure a hippie had gotten to it at one point in its history: it was covered with the remains of flower stickers and orange velvet.  I filed that off and repainted it Bronze:

And this is what I use it for.