I posted this on their forum too, but that forum seems to get very little traffic. It's more likely that someone here would know what I'm talking about anyway.

I want to paint some acrylic eyes like I've seen, and I thought it would be fun to apply a layer of transparent glow in the dark paint before the pigment. I've done it with model paint and GID Mod Podge, so I know the concept works, now I want some other colors of glow. Glow Inc has very bright glowing paint, and lots of colors...in the solvent-based variety. They only have three colors of water-based paint. My question to y'all is, have any of y'all tried solvent-based paint on acrylic eyes? Depending on the solvent and the plastic the eye is made of, the paint could just melt the plastic. I don't have enough experience with solvent-based paint to know how acrylic eyes would react. I always go for water-based everything when I can, but the extra colors of Glow Inc's paints are very tempting! But if I get the wrong type, there isn't really anything else I could use it on, so I don't want to buy some until I'm relatively sure I've got the right kind. Any experiences with this company's products and GID paint in general are welcome.

I have not ........................ but I'm up for learning something new!

Billy d.

I have not tried it but I would think it would work. Paints for models are solvent based or enamel.  I don't see that the make up of an acrylic eye is that different from the plastic in models.  I am sure a chemist would disagree with that statement but I still think you would be ok. Actually if you wanted to try a sort of test you could get some enamel model paint at the hobby or toy store and see how the acrylic eyes react to it. 

After further research, I think it would be unwise for me to use the solvent-based paints, primarily because of their strong fumes. I don't really have a well ventilated place to work with them. I did get another idea though: using glue and GID powder. There are a number of forum posts about doing that. It would be a bit more work, but it would allow me access to more than three colors. :D

Please post your results...sounds interesting.


Billy D.

Please post your results...sounds interesting.


Billy D.

Will do. Still collecting stuff for my cable puppet too.

EDIT: Here's a pic of my experiment from yesterday. Not very pretty, partly because I damaged the eye scrubbing the original paint off, but I only did it to test the idea. It would look much better with a clear eye. This shows it under normal light and black light. Pretty cool, even though this is rather low-grade glow paint!

Cool !

It seems to have worked pretty well.

Well I got a small jar of GID water-based paint, and two small packages of GID powder to experiment with. I can use the powder to coat the back of an eye that's been coated with some kind of clear-drying glue, but I've only tried it with one kind of powder (different colors have different glow intensities and durations) so I'm not sure how well it works overall. Since the powder is fairly transparent when coated with paint, normal paint shows through well when added on top of the GID paint, although it gets lightened slightly because the GID particles aren't completely clear. I did however find that the normal paint has particles that are really too big. I did find another supplier, Glo Nation, that says they can supply paints with different particle sizes, but I haven't gotten a response to the emails I've sent so I haven't yet ordered from them - I want to know there's someone on the other end before sending money, especially since I'd have to specify that I need a very small particle size.

My camera didn't pick up either the daytime color or the glow intensity, unfortunately, but here are pics of painted eyes on my cable puppet.

That's a very neat effect! If I didn't know better, I'd swear that eye was a normal acrylic without any effect at all. The glow is great, and I'd bet it would look fab in real life.