… that in my case it comes out of a (cheapish) spray can, cuz I can’t afford the real thing.
I bought myself two spray cans, one with silver, the other with gold, and thought, let’s see what we can do with this. The silver works great (see here), but the gold is another story altogether.
It splashes around, and instead of a fine spray, the paint comes out in rather large(ish) blobs. What’s worse, it creeps like hell, and if it hits an uneven surface, it separates into its components. Have a look for yourself:
This was (and still is) such a nice shape, but I made several mistakes. The first one was to allow time to pass between the initial shaping and putting the finishing touches on. That allowed the shape to warp slightly, and when I tried to cut the little grooves (to visually hide the place where the lid meets the box) the grooves got ragged and of uneven width.
The second mistake was to overestimate the bond of my masking tape and also my ability to shape it precisely how I wanted it. You can see this in the uneven border of the golden spray paint around the bead in the lid, and the lack of masking tape bond is visible in the strips around the lid and body.
The result is rather ghastly, and unfortunately little can be done now to save the piece. The walls of the box and lid are so thin already that trying to take the grooves of would inevitably result in the whole thing collapsing on itself. Well, another few lessons learned.