I'm a bike person again! In my youth, I think I spent 50% of my time on a bike. I don't know what happened -- actually, no. Scratch that. I do know what happened. Bikes turned into vehicles (which still makes me all sorts of angry) and suddenly, you couldn't bike here; you couldn't bike there; you should have a helmet; you need to be on the road with cars. And sorry, but I don't trust cars cuz guess who wins in bike vs car?
Okay. My mini-rant is over. Now we live right next to actual approved bike paths! Paths that (barely) come into contact with cars. So when I spotted some bikes this winter at a closing-out sale for dirt cheap, I instantly scooped them up.
I still try to stick to the rules in Edmonton, but the one thing I didn't get with the bikes (aside from cheap helmets, locks, and seat pads) were bells. It's the one thing we're supposed to have and the one thing I actually agree with having. I know how it feels to have bikes sneak up on you when you're walking, and it sucks.
Then I spotted these
super cute painted bike bells from Fuuvi a couple weeks ago and figured I could do something similar myself. And when I saw that "boring" bike bells were only $6 and the Fuuvi bells are $20, well! Hello, diy!
All you need is a bell, some paint, painter's tape, cheap brushes (I used foam brushes), and clear varnish.
Tape off the bell in whatever pattern you like. (I wish I had moved my tape a little closer together to get a larger blue stripe, but I still like it! Just make sure to consider that fact if you want to keep any of the metallic colour). Give it a nice coat of paint, then let it dry and give it another coat if you feel it needs it (mine did).
Once the paint dries again, peel off the tape and give it a coat of varnish just to seal everything up for good measure (also most of my paints had a matte finish which I didn't like in this application and the varnish fixes that).
If your paint bleeds under the tape, just take a straight razor and gently scrape the paint away along your line, pushing towards the straight line. I found that doing it this way minimized scratches on the metal surface. Mine bled through a little bit in a few spots, but I was expecting it. It's a little hard to tape securely on a round surface.
For the polka dot bell, I covered the clapper (the part that dings the bell) with paper, then spray painted the entire thing in white. Then I used the eraser end on a pencil to put on the dots which I just eye-balled starting from the center out. Obviously, this is one of those "go crazy with your imagination!" kind of DIYs.
I really don't think the type of paint matters too much either. Honestly, I used acrylic paint from the dollar store (the pink and orange), multi-purpose white spray paint, and semi-gloss house paint (the blue green -- which is the colour on our front door). All paints took two coats (except the orange; probably because it was going over the matte white) and covered easily. If it matters to you, there are a lot of paints available that are specifically for painting metal. I just wanted to keep this dirt cheap so I used paints I already had in the house.
Once the varnish is no longer tacky, attach your bell to your bike and you're good to go!
