Carriage Fit For A Princess

My niece recently celebrated her First Birthday!!!! I knew I wanted to get her or make her something totally awesome that I know she would use and love. I found a little tikes cozy coupe for like $10 on an exchange site and I instantly bought it! I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it exactly but I knew it had possibilities.

Here is the cozy coupe before!

 After getting it home and really looking at it I decided it looks a lot like Cinderella's Carriage, with that in mind I got to work drawing out some sketches. I then went out and bought spray paint, I decided on Rustoleum Light Blue, Dark Blue, and a Metallic Gold.

The car and paint colors.

Okay so after a TON of research on spray painting Little Tikes items and a some what failure before I decided to "prime" it with Krylon spray paint! The Krylon was just plain white, I followed the instructions to the T. I painted it one night and then repeated the process the next night, I used TWO cans of the Krylon paint. Now here's the sucky part, I waited 7 days, yes 7 days, until I started to spray paint again. Krylon recommends 7 days of drying until its supposed to be tough and hard to chip.

After the "primer"

So after a full week of the waiting game I started the blue :)  I used TWO cans of this blue and once again followed instructions. I painted one coat of blue then after about 20 mins I painted another coat. I originally was going to paint the inside chair part dark blue but I was on a time crunch and decided to just paint it the light blue.

The Blue Coat Drying

Ok so now things get tricky! I was going to spray paint the door edges gold and add something to the license plate area but I knew that would be difficult so I bought gold paint and hand painted those parts.

Hand Painted Gold Accents

So after that was all done I decided it was too much blue!!! It was then I decided to tape off and cover up any parts of the car that I didnt want gold. I then proceeded to paint the top gold.

Getting The Gold Coat

So after that dried I clear coated the whole car a few times. Once again following instructions, I did small coats a few minutes apart. And here is the finished product:

I even spray painted the gas tank black and added two small circles above it to make it look like Mickey Mouse ears! I also added an old english style C to the main door. (All of this done before the clear coating.) My niece loves this car! I literally pushed her around in it for at least a hour the day I gave it to her and since then she's gotten a lot of use out of it. I won't lie to you though it does chip :(  Nothing too terrible but parts of the inner door have chipped off due to the door rubbing against it and anytime my niece bumps into things a little too hard it starts to slightly chip. I expected all of that though and honestly she doesn't notice it and loves it so it works :)