Products to Avoid: Paint Pen

I don't like to complain or talk badly about things on here, but this one I just can't help. 

I'm not saying anything bad about the brand itself, because I use a lot of their paints and products and love them, I'm just hating on this particular product. 

The Craftsmart Fine Line Paint Pen. 

In theory, these things are amazing. I have a black one (some Wal-Mart brand, the label peeled off) that saved a project of mine. It worked better than I could've imagined. 

This particular paint pen was so runny that I couldn't do a thing with it. It's supposed to run out a little when you first get it started, but then you blot it on some paper towel and go on your way. That worked for me at first. 

This was the particular project I was working on: Wooden Super Mario stars. These are the first 3 large stars that I made. I used simple white paint, then a black permanent marker to fix it up. It got the job done, but if you look closely, the permanent marker is noticeable. Only closely. 

I needed to make three little ones too, and thought with the help of my paint markers they would be super easy. And they were. 

I drew the circles with the black paint pen then I filled in the white with the other paint pen. Because it's so runny it was kind of clear and I had to do three coats each. No matter how dry each layer was, when I used it for another coat, the under layer got a little sticky. I got through 5 of the 6 eyes with no major trouble. Then the 6th eye I started to do my last coat and all of a sudden the pen spilled out a ton of paint. 

I might have been able to blot it and make less of a mess, but when I instinctively grabbed the star, and the paint ran all over the side. I wiped at it and made a bigger mess (see photo #2). I started sanding down the mess in hopes to fix it up some other day. 

I still had two small stars that were in great shape. Time to spray with acrylic sealer. Even though I did this with the three big stars with no troubles, this time around the acrylic sealer made the white eyes go runny again, and without even touching them (see the first photo). 

So now out of my three little stars I have one that needs to be sanded, repainted yellow, and have the eyes repainted. I have another that is nice and shiny from the acrylic sealer, but has blurry eyes. And I have a third that looks great, but I can't seal it because the eyes on that one will ruin.

So I'm taking a breather from working on my stars until I get the energy to sand them, and fix them up. This time without the help of the white paint pen, which is now in the trash. 

I must be maturing. Normally I'd want to throw the entire project out the window, literally, but I didn't even freak out when each of the troubles happened. 

What's a product that you've tried and had a lot of trouble with? Share your story.