Painted deer antlers

A couple of years ago I bought four deer antlers on eBay. I have been meaning to use them in some sort of upcycle project ever since- so last night I decided to paint them. I have seen lots of gorgeous looking ones on Pinterest so I took my inspiration from there.

It is best to give the antlers a good scrub first and let them dry out before painting.

I chose to use Fusion mineral paint in Casement (which is basically white) because it gives great coverage, seriously this paint is lush. I already had a pot from another project, it isn't the cheapest paint but a 500ml pot goes a long way. This gave a good base to add colours to.

I chose a colour palette of turquoise, coral and gold to give it a Navajo kind of feel. The paints are DecoArt crafter's acrylic in Glorious Gold, Coral and Turquoise. I used a fine paint brush and the colour blocks took two layers to get a good coverage. For the last antler I used Cerulean Blue acrylic on the tips.

This was really simple and therapeutic. If you don't have antlers and want to do something similar you can use sticks. I used to collect sticks for this very purpose.

The antlers could be used to hang macrame from, as a jewellery holder or just as general bohemian style decor. To hand them we wrapped them in galvanised wire creating a loop in two points and then nailed them to the wall.