Painting a custom without brush strokes showing?

[TexasGal]

There is a lot of great advice in here!  Thanks for all these great tips, everyone!

[MintyMama]

I was worried about this, but I did my first pony with metallic acrylic, and it worked well.  The metallic colors are very forgiving.  I didn't like working with it watered down, but I did figure out quickly to give that full hour dry time between coats that the bottle says to do.  I got one side a little goopy, but I found I could wipe the goopy, part off with acetone finger nail polish remover (not 100% acetone) without messing the entire paint job up.  If you pick mine up and look at it, you'd see the lightest of brush strokes, but not looking at it sitting on a table or taking a photo.