I know there are a lot of folks here who paint spandex, though I haven't had a lot of luck with it. Either the paint beads up on the surface, or it soaks right in and turns the color really dark. I was painting diamonds on blue spandex, and using Jacquard Lumiere metallic paints. The silver and metallic blue were beautiful, but the gold and green were AWFUL and needed 5-6 coats to look nice. Experiment! I also had good luck using a white spray fabric paint from Jo Ann, spraying through a mesh overlay (I found this great big diamond mesh at JoAnn around Halloween). I imagine airbrushing would also work well. Just be sure you've pre-stretched the spandex as you paint it. Puffy paint also works well on spandex. Oh! And painting works much better on spandex if it's that printed foil-dot shiny spandex-- the paint sticks nicely to the dots and keeps the colors more true. I was painting just regular blue lycra. LindseyLu has some gorgeous painted spandex
here, though I bet she used an airbrush.
Painting on neoprene seems to work better- there's a tutorial here somewhere showing a technique to paint very realistic scales.
I think this is it. I couldn't get her technique to work on spandex though.
If you mean painting directly on a rubber/plastic monofin, I can't help with that. I've never tried it! And don't bother painting polycarbonate, nothing sticks to that stuff.
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