Didymus, don't give up on metal veneers. They have qualities that paint will never match. I think the problem you're having is that you aren't stretching the metal. You have to think of it like a piece of vinyl tape (electrical tape for example). In order to get a flat piece to conform to a 3D surface it MUST stretch.
Next time you are at Home Depot or other home center pick up a roll of aluminum stove pipe tape. It's much thicker than BMF and sticks better too so you can really pull the crap out of it to stretch and conform. The pick below is a piece of stove tape I stretched around the end of a screwdriver (not unlike a babymoon hubcap). I simply went around the edge pulling with one hand and burnishing with the side of a paintbrush handle with the other. You can see some small wrinkles developed as the curvature began to reverse but this was an extreme example and I didn't want to spend more than 5 minutes on it.
