Painting your Nerf gun is a great way to complete that mod or turn it into a fiercer looking blaster. Few tutorials exist, so here is a complete guide on painting your Nerf gun.

Types of Paints

Not just any can of spray paint will do, in fact, it takes a special type to get this paint job done. So far, as far as paint goes, two types have been widely recommended by experienced modders. The most recommended spray paints are:

• Krylon Fusion - For Plastics
• Vinyl Dye - For Vinyl and Fabrics

Both of which will bond to the plastic, ensuring a longer life to your sweet paint job.

What You Will Need

• Black spray paint
• Additional colors of your choice
• Sandpaper
• Screw driver
• Masking tape

The Steps

If this is your first time, you should stick to just painting the shells. I highly advise that you do not paint the internals of any of your Nerf guns until you get some experience. You could easily gunk up the inner workings, right away or later on down the road when the paint starts wearing off. Until you get some experience painting Nerf guns, I'd recommend you stick to just painting the shell.

With that said, here are the steps:

• Get your halves - Using a screw driver, disassemble your blaster to remove the pieces of the shell you wish to paint.
• Start sanding - Sanding is an important step that should not be overlooked. It will give you a longer lasting paint job by providing more surface area for the paint to bond to. You want the shell to feel rough, so sand it till it feels that way (it doesn't take long).
• Wash the pieces - After a good sanding, wash the shell pieces. You want the paint to bond directly to the plastic, not the dust from sanding, or any other impurities.
• Prime it - This is done by spray painting the shells with a thin coat of your black spray paint. Painting it black will allow your 2nd coat to stick out, much more than it would if you ONLY spray painted the shells with your color of choice.
• Wait a bit - Let your base coat dry. This often takes 20 minutes or so.
• Tape it up - If you want your Nerf gun to have black accented parts, then cover them with masking tape to keep your 2nd coat from covering them. If you just want one solid color, then forget this step.
• Add some color - Using your color of choice, spray a thin coat over the part of the shell that hasn't been taped.

Once the paint has dried, you can either use some model paint to touch it up for some extra accents, or put everything back together.

The last step of course is admiring your work

See The Steps in Action

This isn't my video, but it covers the basic parts of painting a Nerf gun, and should give you a visual reference of everything that was covered above.

Painted any Nerf guns recently? If so, does your masterpiece beat these painted nerf guns?.