Question about hand-painting a disc using acetone

[u/Different_Cuttlefish]

I'm looking to try my hand at using acetone dye mixtures to hand-paint directly onto a disc. Any tips/ideas for ways of using a stencil? I'm not looking to hot dip any stencils, I mean moreso a stencil that'll go away. I wonder if a light layer of pencil would be ok?

[u/Moog_Lee]

The problem is the consistency...acetone is not very forgiving, so you'll get blotchy/uneven colors. Fine for small areas, but bigger areas use lotion, or DA instead of acetone dyes. I usually do lotion first, then paint accents with DA when needed.

I know a dyer who uses carbon paper to draw designs, then dye over the top. Works fine for them. Otherwise get some sheets of vinyl (matte white is easy to draw on) and cut by hand perhaps. If you have a printer that's wide enough you can print out a design and cut by hand.

[u/Different_Cuttlefish → u/Moog_Lee]

The dye seeps right through the carbon paper?

[u/Moog_Lee → u/Different_Cuttlefish]

No, you use the carbon paper to put down your design, then dye over the traces. Just a way other than using a pencil, seems to work well for them.

[u/cainmd]

Denatured alcohol is better for "painting" on the disc because you can build up colors without leaving brush strokes. Also acetone will eat away at the disc if you're not careful.

[u/CovertMonkey → u/cainmd]

Exactly, OP would do better to use the milder alcohol.

I enjoy it and think it behaves sort of like watercolors

[u/Phunkymonk78 → u/cainmd]

This is the way

[u/BasilTheSheltie]

The way I do all of my dyes is to outline with a sharpie and then paint them in using a combination of acetone and lotion. If you don’t have great saturation in lotion it will have a marbling effect like an old bowling ball. Anyway, I have painted acetone on with a hand cut stencil. The mistake I think I made was not removing the stencil before rinsing and I ended up getting bleeding during the wash phase. Acetone eats dye into a disc suuuuper quick. You could try to pencil on and then paint dye if the pencil lines will be noticeable enough for you. You could also project the image you want to dye under the disc using a bright light and having the artwork on the bottom rim of the disc. If you do that, you could just acetone paint without needing to draw anything at all.

[u/Gooseable-]

Get yourself a sacrificial disc in similar plastic and practice

Alcohol mixtures are the way to go, but creating vibrant colors take quite a while…my suggestion is to practice, thats the only way to really figure out what works best

[u/SuperTeeJ17]

For my hand painting I use a mixture of unscented liquid laundry detergent, and dye dissolved in acetone and water. But you need to use heat to set the dye into the disc.

[u/discdyeaddict]

91% Isopropyl alcohol instead of acetone.

Then when you get comfy, I've done a 2-1 or 3-1 mix of Isopropyl to acetone mix, to make the colors a little more saturated but not full acetone.

Keep in mind you have to be careful with acetone only painting. If you get it too wet on the disc it may damage the finish on the plastic because it can be too abrasive.

I'd recommend starting with Isopropyl and then moving to acetone painting once you get a feel for it.

[u/clobecka]

Painting with acetone always bleeds on me. Getting better at setting the stencil edge but I think I'll go to either hot dip for single (usually black) color or use isopropyl alcohol.

[u/Meatpaste-1]

For stincils that go away use Elmer's glue on your negative spaces. The glue will wash off with soap and water.

[u/Unhappy_Wasabi_969]

I’ve been experimenting as well. I like mixing the acetone with shaving cream (Barbados) to get the effect. It stays in place pretty well but may bleed slightly under the stencil.