Colorful Wooden Utensils

I had been collecting secondhand wooden utensils for the past year or so with the intent of painting the handles and giving them as holiday gifts to friends.  There have been loads of tutorials on how to make these popping up all over Pinterest for years now, so I had plenty of reference instructions before I began. These stripey ones were my initial inspiration (though I decided not to go stripey because laziness superseded the desire for stripes), but I also loved the more subtle look of these, though ultimately decided to go brighter, like these.    

Being secondhand, I did boil these for about 30 minutes just to kill off any wee beasties that may be lurking in the wood, then I just taped the top edge of the handle with masking tape, painted the handles with craft paint (anywhere from 2-3 coats depending on the color saturation desired), set them up to dry (TIP: place disposable cups placed inside glass ones, then place the utensils in the cups painted end up while drying), used a non-toxic shellac to seal the painted handles (lay down newspaper and use brushes you do not intend to keep--this stuff does not clean up easily--I managed to shellac part of a fingertip in the process), and finished them off by conditioning the unpainted portions of the utensils with a combo of beeswax and mineral oil (Stephanie has good instructions for how to make your own wood oil, found here).  That was it.  Pretty simple, really.  I mean, as long as you do not shellac any parts of your body...