Painting onto plastic?

[0098386]

This has me stumped, I'm trying to stencil a design onto my Wii controller (the systems in the family room and I'm going the arty route to differenciating mine). I've got the thing unscrewed and it's infront of me. I can't really experiment with other paints as I don't want to ruin it.

Ideally I'm after something that will leave a faint grey colour on it.

I made a little mock up image a while back for my DS Lite, so I'm after something that can get this kind of permanent colour. >> http://satansam.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/finished.jpg

Any help will be so smashing

 

[mac-convert]

This has me stumped, I'm trying to stencil a design onto my Wii controller (the systems in the family room and I'm going the arty route to differenciating mine). I've got the thing unscrewed and it's infront of me. I can't really experiment with other paints as I don't want to ruin it.

Ideally I'm after something that will leave a faint grey colour on it.

take a trip to whatever local store you have that sells those plastic model car or plane kits. They will have whatever you need. You might even take a look at an inexpensive air-brush! Enjoy - post a pic later!

 

[iGav]

Tamiya make spray cans suitable for model painting, those would do the job dandy as the spray is metered, meaning you get a finer spray, not quite airbrush quality but much cheaper. A satin or gloss paint (especially the latter) will be reasonably wear resistant, a matt finish won't be and will scratch and mark easily.

Off the top of my head, I'm also reasonably certain that they produce translucent paints too, which in a cool grey colour would provide the subtle results you want.

Stuff like Plasti-Kote or even Halfords acrylic sprays offer good quality finishes, but they tend to produce a thicker volume of paint from the nozzle, so they're not especially good for intricate finishing that you ideally need for stenciling work.

Any good model shop should stock the tamiya spray paints, I think they're around a fiver tops.

Hope that helps.

 

[mkrishnan]

Do you paint the DS Lite from the inside out (like those iBook mods), or do you paint directly on the exterior surface?