Well, it has been fun to see how the potato buttons turned out. After they dried for about a week, it was time to paint them. First, I took them off the Bobby pins and then slid them onto some toothpicks. They fit snugly on the toothpicks, so the toothpicks worked really well for holding them while they were being painted. After the paint dried about 10 minutes, I took them off the toothpick so they would not be stuck permanently. When they were dry to the touch, I painted the edges. Painting was a little bit of a messy job. :-)
All in all, I was pleased with how they turned out. One dried in a little bit of an irregular shape, almost looks like a heart. If I do anything different next time, I think I’ll cut the buttons thinner. They did not shrink as much as I had expected. Perhaps ¼ of an inch thick would be good. Generally they dry irregularly on one side but remain round on the other. They can be applied to craft projects round side up.
The red paint used was Apple Barrel brand and was 20636 Real Red, Gloss, Indoor, Outdoor acrylic paint. This paint takes 4 hours to dry between coats, but it looks really nice. I used two coats.
The little pieces of potato I made into two irregular beads. These were painted with PLAID, Folk Art brand acrylic paint, 484 Brilliant Ultramarine (looks like blue to me. :-) ) It takes this paint 1 hour to dry between coats. After painting the beads with two coats of this paint, I applied a coat of PLAID, Folk Art, Gems, Sapphire paint to make them sparkle.