Hey there all. So I had a few paint chips/scratches on my hood (smaller ones) and one on my spoiler (bigger, ~1in). Vogue silver metallic Integra. Before I get started, here's some current pictures. I feel like I'm in a little over my head (just a bit, of course /s).

Me and a friend (who claimed he somewhat knew what he was doing but I'm still not sure) did some touching up on the paint; for the hood, we cleaned the spots, then put some bondo in them, sanded it down (2000 grit wet), then primed the biggest one and sanded it. Used a paint pen that's supposed to be the OEM color, although the car is 16 years old so the original paint's gunna be a bit faded. Then we sanded them down again, 3000 grit wet, and that's where we stopped with the hood. I obviously still need to go over them again with 3000. Now it's a matte gray where we sanded (but seems to look normal when wet), and from what he said and what I've read, it needs a polish/wax then maybe some clearcoat.

Then the spoiler; it was pretty bad so he sanded it down (just past the clearcoat), then did a few layers of primer over it. I should mention now that we used filler primer. We sanded it down with 3000 grit wet (took a pretty long time), and painted over it with the pen. We didn't get to sanding that down yet.

Now feel free to call me out for being the absolute donkey I am for going this far on my own; I deserve it, lol. My ultimate question is: is there anything I should do before anything else to fix any possible mistakes here? I've read a bit (after the fact) about how you should only sand it in a motion parallel to the car, but we kinda didn't do that. Do I go back over it like that? And second, assuming we didn't mess it up, what's the next step in order to make the hood spots shiny/blended again? Finish sanding then polish > wax > clearcoat? What about clay or compound? Is the clearcoat actually necessary?

I appreciate any tips!

I don't think you can salvage that and make it look good. You can't fill in that large of areas, especially metallic and not be noticeable. I think it needs a complete respray.

Were you trying to do all this touch up with rattle cans?

It was with a paint pen (little brush). I'm not really expecting it to look super good at this point; the chips themselves weren't very big (~1/4 sq. in. each), it's just that some of the clearcoat around it got sanded a bit. Is there no way to fill in the clearcoat scratches with any sort of product?

Anything you do at this point is really just cosmetic and won't last very long at all.
The chips were not properly repaired and more than likely they will grow in size.

The people offering information on this site do not want to advise you to do something they wouldn't do themselves. If you want to know how to do this the right way and have a nice looking paint job for years to come then we can help you.

Okay. Thanks for you guys' help and suggestions. I've been looking into the cost of repainting it (doesn't seem bad, especially if I can find someone's 'reducer' and 'activator' that I can use a small bit of). Was also given the info of an older gent that does good backyard work from what I've heard, so I'll look into that too.