Some time ago my nephew (7) started obsessing over the animated TV-show Troll Hunters and found an Etsy store selling the hero’s magic artefact: The Amulet of Daylight.
It was quite pricey but he wanted it so bad that his dad (my brother) asked me if I, by any chance, could be able to make one relatively easy.
I found a shop that sold a cheap 3D model of the amulet here, printed it and gave it as a present. He was overjoyed!
I don’t have a picture of the assembled amulet but the front can be seen here:
The 3D model that I had bought was actually impressively detailed and I had always wanted to play with making nicer looking things so I made it a project to see how far I could push this one with a bit of paint.
After a visit to a WarHammer shop and getting some guidance on how to paint something to look like metal, bought a bunch of paint and got started.
I printed the parts again at the highest details my printer would allow (0.4mm nozzle, 0.1mm layer height), gave it a bit of post-processing with a file, some sandpaper and an exacto knife and started painting.
While my process was definitely not linear and I had a lot of test objects where I tried different techniques, I eventually ended up with a plan, in particular about painting the runes with a glow-in-the-dark paint and using a printed out picture for the back. Making the printed picture look good during daylight and glow nicely in the night was a tricky bit but the best approach I found was to soak the backside of the paper in glow-in-the-dark paint, add an even and very thin layer on the front and manually paint on the stars with a toothpick.
I glued everything together and coated it in an acrylic lacquer and that’s it. Many months condensed into a few paragraphs and I will let the result speak almost for itself, because I must admit that I am very happy with it!
Jakob Welner 
Looks like you’ve done a good job & I’m sure it created magic for your nephew đŸ™‚ I’m actually a customer of the Etsy shop you mentioned, bought for my son & I do have to defend their price (I bought their rechargeable light up one) as I can honestly say their amulet is truly fantastic and looks like it’s bigger than the one you’ve made. It created an entirely magical world for my son which was worth the cost in itself but perhaps as well I might comment that you said the effect you finally achieved took you months so perhaps the cost on the Etsy shop is justified? Your work does look good too, please don’t think for a second I’m saying otherwise, I just don’t like artists getting short changed for what is clearly a lot of time and manual work which I’m sure you now appreciate after making this one for your nephew.
Hi Nic and thanks for the kind words.
Regarding the Etsy shop and price of the amulet then I did not mean to say that it was too expensive for what you get but I can see that it may be read that way.
The story was a bit more complex:
My brother only got in touch with me to check if I could print something easily that would be a sufficient replacement for my nephews own attempt of cutting a circle in carboard and making a drawing on it.
With that as the standard I believed I could simply print the 3D model and it would be a sufficient improvement at a much lower price than the Etsy shop, but also far from the quality of the Etsy shop.
However, I got inspired and eventually spent A LOT OF TIME on this model.
If it hadn’t been a hobby project I would’ve had to sell it at a much higher price than the Etsy model to get anywhere near a reasonable hourly rate so I completely understand the price point of the Etsy shop and believe it is well justified.