I Painted a Cooler!

Several months ago, Kevin joked with me about how I should paint him a cooler "for some occasion." So naturally, I painted him a cooler for his birthday. I had never painted a cooler before--let alone painted anything in several years--so I had to rediscover my artistic abilities and channel them into this new project. And that didn't turn out too badly! 
I was completely at a loss for the process, so I consulted Pinterest and friends for advice and pointers. This tutorial from A Peach in Paris was fantastic and provided me with great guidance and tips. I had to modify some of the steps, but for the most part, it worked perfectly. Pinterest is always there for me when I need it. 
The cooler I used was a small-ish (24-can) Igloo that I found at Walmart (on sale, too). Generally, you want to go for as flat a top surface as possible, but sometimes it's unavoidable, depending on what else you want for the cooler. Mine had a raised, rigid tiling on top, but it wasn't hard to fix. I just filled it with spackling and sanded it smooth. Super easy.

Speaking of sanding, that isn't always easy. It's actually kind of annoying. But painting on smooth surfaces is much easier than on rougher surfaces, so sand away.

I bought all of my supplies at Walmart and Michael's: cooler, paint, primer, sealer, paint pens. I had sand paper and tissue paper for tracing at home, and my mom had a huge variety of brushes from her painting days years ago.

I'd really hoped the weather would be nice all last week and I could do most or all of my work outside in my back yard. Unfortunately, it rained poured every day last week, so I turned my basement into my little art studio.
As soon as I decided to paint the cooler, I pretty much already knew what I was going to paint on all the sides. Well, I had general ideas, but exact designs and such came later. I doodled and sketched them out, just to make sure I'd be on the right track. And then the fun part began! But first, as per procedure, I had to prime it before I could actually start painting. 
The "tissue paper method" of tracing works wonders. I printed my logos, images, and words, traced them onto tissue paper, and then traced them directly onto the cooler with a Sharpie. I only had trouble with one logo, but that was because I tried being super fancy and it just never turned out right, so I gave up and tried something more manageable. 

 

Also, painter's tape is definitely handy in this process. It kept my cooler quasi-neat and left me with little touching-up to do in the end. 

My cooler took me about a week to paint. Granted, it's smaller than a normal-sized cooler, and I didn't paint every single inch of it (I left the bottom part white and primed). But for doing it all in a week--okay, I did some of it before I left for Europe, so not all of it--I'd say it didn't turn out that bad at all. And Kevin loved it, and that's what matters. He was definitely surprised.

(And yes, we broke it in and used it for a picnic lunch later that day.)