Shaking paint pots like a pro (or maybe a lazy person)

My soft spot for new paints is almost as bad as the one that makes me buy silly stuff on Aliexpress. This made my purchase of a Nail Lacker Shaker inevitable. But does it actually work?

I think I should paint this machine, add some decals and a purity seal.

Disused acrylic paints, especially metallics, start to separate after a while. For those of us with too many paints (or too few hours in a month to paint) this means having to shake certain paint pots like a maniac before use. Sometimes the paint just will mix properly even after your arms are too tired to keep shaking. Szome people solve this by jury rigging a clamp to a jigsaw. As I couldn't find a proper clamp I briefly blue-tacked paint pots to a hammer drill. You need to have a lot of faith in the lid of the paint pot to do that (or little care for your walls and floor). The pot will fly off after a while. I was considering buying a proper glue clamp to go for the jigsaw approach when I found this Nail Lacquer Shaker on Aliexpress for 17 euro (19 dollar) including shipping.

Nail Lacquer Shaker? I think not! It should say Paint Pot Shaker.

The shaker is a platform with a small bracket. You place the paint pot on the bracket, use a provided rubber band (extra's included in the box) to fix it in place. Then you push the black button on the thing and it starts shaking. Easy peasy. It can run on batteries or the provided power adapter.

I've been putting off buying these for about seven years now. I should not have waited that long.

To give a bit of extra power to the shaking I played heavy and death metal. I also dropped an agitator ball in the paint pot. This bag of 150 set me back 4.5 euro and I can heartily recommend adding this to your arsenal (regardless of splurging on a shaking machine or not).

This paint has parted so badly, it's going to cost me my arm to shake it back into submission. 

Here's the pot of disused Brass Scorpion I decided needed a good shake.

Fear not! Nail Lacquer Shaker to the rescue!

I added the agitator ball, fixed the pot onto the magic shaking machine, pushed the black button and had a nice sip of tea. While shaking, especially with a pot of paint this bad, I pick up the machine and hold it sideways and upside down a bit. No idea if it helps, but it passes the time and feels like a really useful addition. I also give the pot a final shake by hand, just because I can't stop myself.

Another paint pot saved...

After about five minutes on the magic paint shaker (still working on a proper name) the paint has reverted to a useful state. No more stirring with cocktail sticks for me. It actually works so quick and easy I shake almost all my paint pots on it. For anyone looking to shake paints like a pro and for all you lazy hobbyist out there I recommend the Nail Lacquer Shaker. No word on quality though. I've been using it for about a month now and it hasn't drawn sparks yet, for an Aliexpress product I'd call that 10 gold stars out of 10 ;).