Vintage Military Helmet Painting

For the longest time, I've had this old swiss m71 helmet laying around. It was a plain ol', boring ol' olive drab color. Then Halloween season began and my brother and I hatched an evil master plan to be post-apocalyptic soldiers this year. And, of course, Being the brothers we are, we set out to do it all ourselves.
Starting with the helmets.
 This one is going to be short and sweet.

What you will need:
1. One of those AWESOME old helmets that are made of that thick metal and weigh at least 3-5 pounds(I had two of them just laying around my house, but then again, I'm a weirdo. Most military surplus stores carry vintage helmets like mine for $20 to $50 depending on the rarity or era that the helmet is)
2. A marker for layout
3.spraypaint for large areas or designs
4. Acrylic Paint for details and smaller designs
5. CREATIVITY! I don't want to see any rehash of what my helmet is.
6. A camera. Yeah. I want to see what you people do with this idea.

BORING!!!!! I've always hated layout, but it must be done. Start the layout by making a main color deviation. Mine was a big gold stripe down the middle of the helm. I marked off the area to paint with a sharpie (Dry erase is much more convenient... No scrubbing to remove mistakes), then I used masking tape to tape off the rest of the helmet as to not paint the whole thing gold. Then I spraypainted away!

After the gold stripe, the helmet needed a more personalized look to it, as if the soldier had added a part of himself to it. So I chose some of my defining symbols to adorn the helm. A skull (pirates beat ninjas), a rampant lion (I'm often described as a lionhearted person), A sword (I really love that symbol and it's connotations) and a heart (I have a soft side, A VERY soft side).

So I pulled out my acrylic paints, a few reference pictures and my dry-erase marker ( I learned my lesson from that sharpie after I had to restart the lion).

I Then proceeded to Draw the items on the helm and paint  them to my liking. I hope you like them too.

After the paint dried on all accounts, I then noticed that the helmet looked nothing like a post-apocalyptic soldier's helm. It needed to be more rugged. To solve this, I Used a bit of 
sandpaper to lightly distress the paint. I am now very satisfied with my helmet.
I hope to see your helmet paintings on here as well!
Happy Painting!