Has anyone had experience with spray painting fabric?

I'm working on a costume with lots of gold detail and half is armour and half fabric. Getting a good looking gold material at all is pretty tough, but this needs to match with the spray I use on the armour which will be pretty shiny.

I'm concidering spraying the fabric in the same paint to match it all up, so if anyone has any tips on what fabrics take the paint best without looking dull or if you've tried and it's an awful idea let me know

From my modest experience with it, when you spray most kinds of fabric with Spray paints it goes very Solid like a rigid peice of plastic >,< its fine for little bits like the spray paint splashes on Ryutaros's jacket and hat in Kamen Rider Den-o but im not sure about doing a whole peice.

That's a good point. Airbrushing and fabric paints are also an option, but again I've yet to find a nice shiny gold one.

Its a tough colour to match for anything O_o its just loss of flexibility, airbrushing might work with it being thinner buuut you risk it being more faded

I can only vouch for what I've done so far with Lady Sif, buuuut...

Spray painting is an extremely effective way of getting lots of coverage fairly quickly on sealed foam. I found when I tried to coat the other (fabric-lined) side, the paint either cracked or made the fabric stiff enough to slice cheese with. This was partly the PVA glue used to hold it on, partly the paint to be fair but as the good Captain says the loss of flexibility can be extreme.

I also used car spray paint not fabric spray, but the finish (although shiny) is not that glossy. I only say this as a side note; the gold paint you use might be very different. The Wicked Red I used over some Red Primer (both from Halfords) have given the foam a rather unintended but extremely nice 'boiled leather' look. It might be worth just testing an area with the paint first and see how it dries to avoid an unexpected finish.

If you're trying for gold fabric, is it worth getting the sewing kit out? It's a lot of effort but I've found spray paint to be a finickity thing to work with.

Edit: And, incidentally, Halfords do have a colour match service with their paints. Is it worth bringing in a swatch of fabric and seeing if they can do anything?

Nah, it totally works! All the gradients I did on a recent costume were done using spray paint.





This is Nissan posideon blue lightly sprayed on a crepe fabric, then a stencil cut from freezer paper, ironed on like a stencil then gold enamel sprayed on. Then wiped down with a baby wipe to get rid of the excess paint.

It makes it a bit crisper, but crepe has a good drape anyway so it can handle being a bit stiffer. You also need a press cloth to iron it or it will get sticky.

The main thing is to lightly spritz it, don't coat it on harshly.

Makes good sense and thanks for sharing, I wouldn't have guessed the blue was sprayed

Also seems like using absorbent fabric is important, I've heard from a few people that spray paint doesn't work on leatherette/vinyl and either stays sticky or flakes off.

Marabu do a fabric spray paint which comes in gold, not sure if the colour would be right for what you're looking for but still might be worth a look at ^^

Regular spray paint has always been a bit hit and miss for me, sometimes it works fine, sometimes it goes horribly wrong, so your best bet is probably just to test it and see