This is one of those posts where you are going to say “Why didn’t I think of that!?!”  It isn’t exactly earth shattering, but it was too cute not to share.

You may not be aware of my slight nutcracker obsession. Every year I take the girls to see the Nutcracker ballet and they each get to pick out a nutcracker. When I get home I write on the Ballet name and the date.. (Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, San Jose Ballet, etc)  This was our collection from 2012.. it is a bit bigger now:

And if a nutcracker collection isn’t enough,  last year I even did a mantel that featured my favorite nutcracker theme “the Land of Sweets”So of course this year I couldn’t pass up the cheap $1 nutcrackers at the dollar store this year: 
They are pretty cheesy and not nicely painted, but I knew I could spruce them up.    I wanted them to look more modern or contemporary.  So the first thing I did was rip off the poorly glue-gunned on hair:
Then I took them outside and set up my spray paint area:

I chose two different metallic paints.  A silver (this is Rust-oleum Metallic Silver):

And high gloss gold (this is American Accents Gold Metallic):
And that is all there was to it (I saved the third nutcracker for another project I’ll be sharing shortly!)

I am actually really impressed with the shiny finish with these spray paints. Especially considering how rough the surfaces of these nutcrackers were:
Here you can see just how much a transformation it really is: I can’t wait to set them up with other gold and silver pieces.  They will look fantastic.