For my altered toys project I created a cube pokeball. I ended up making three different sizes and you can place them in one another like russian nesting dolls which is neat. I modeled the pokecube in maya and printed them in white pla on the ultimaker using the standard print settings. The airpods case is for scale, I also did not paint the medium sized one as I think it looks better without any paint though if I do paint it I want to try using spray paint instead of acrylic as it may look better. The prints took 2, 7 and 10 hours for the small, medium and large versions.
I like that you are thinking about how to improve upon your design still with thinking of changing the paint to spray paint instead of acrylic. I hope if you do it turns out well!