Spandex Dye or paint?

Sundowner

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For my costume this year I will be attaching leds to a base glove then fitting a flesh color glove over that to give the appearance of a glowing hand. The flesh colored gloves came in and they are too light for my skin. It’s really obvious too so I was wondering what I could use to darken the glove a bit. It’s spandex and I had read that is difficult to dye. So what are my options? I have an airbrush kit that I have never used at my disposal. I was thinking about even dipping it in coffee.
 
so, I am under the impression, that you would get the best result by putting the glove on you own hand (with a latex glove to protect you from paint), or a mannequin hand, and use the airbrush to paint it.

my only concern is that you'd want to make sure the paint doesn't react badly with the spandex glove before you had it wrapped around your hand... would suck to put it on, paint it, then find out the hard way that your paint and/or its accelerant makes the spandex melt and cause you chemical burns or something.
 
so, I am under the impression, that you would get the best result by putting the glove on you own hand (with a latex glove to protect you from paint), or a mannequin hand, and use the airbrush to paint it.

my only concern is that you'd want to make sure the paint doesn't react badly with the spandex glove before you had it wrapped around your hand... would suck to put it on, paint it, then find out the hard way that your paint and/or its accelerant makes the spandex melt and cause you chemical burns or something.

That can happen?!
 
Any time I'm painting a new material, I make sure the chemicals play nice together.

it's a bigger deal with spray paint, than with brush on paint. The accelerant in spray paint will eat away at certain things like Styrofoam (it will straight up melt), and cause a lot of heat at the same time.

If your airbrush uses an air compressor, you're probably fine (still might as well run the airbrush and paint over a sample piece of the material first though). However, if your airbrush uses a can of compressed mystery-gas, I'd be checking the warning labels on the can, and doing some test painting in a well ventilated area before I went whole hog on something, especially when what you're painting is a "synthetic" material like spandex.

Side note, I've seen super glue do some weird stuff to synthetic materials too. There's a woven strapping I used for lots of costume stuff; super glue holds it together great... but it seems to do that by melting it via exothermic reaction (Gets Hot).
 
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I've painted a bunch of fabrics while wearing it before; for me, it worked fine, I just wore another same sized piece of spandex under it while painting. I think textile paint will work fine; if you really take your time and add layer by layer, you can make it look like it's airbrushed anyway.

Not to boast, but just to give an exampe, this is supposed to be my version of Cali from Cirque du soleil's Amaluna. :p
SZSco0O.png


(The legs are spandex, the upper fabrics were a little more cotton-based though I don't remember what exactly it was; I got it cause it was skin-toned. I definately recommend the more spandex, the better paint base though).
 
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