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geekhack Projects => Making Stuff Together! => Topic started by: Lunatique on Sun, 07 December 2014, 18:03:53

Title: Any of you do hand-painted keycap customization?
Post by: Lunatique on Sun, 07 December 2014, 18:03:53
Have any of you artistic types tried to do hand-painted keycap customization? For example, using acrylic paint, enamel paint, nail polish, oil-based waterproof markers, etc to highlight specific keycaps by painting a border rim around the top face, or make the legend bolder/different color, etc. You can even get really creative and paint images onto the keyboard's frame or on the keycaps. A protective coating could seal the paint and make it more permanent, and if it eventually wears off, you could just touch it up.

I've been painting my keyboards for a few years now, and I started doing it because I wanted to make certain keys more obvious, and I didn't know anything about the keyboard community and all the customization options, so I just tried to DIY according to my needs. Now that I know there are custom keycaps I can buy, I'm a lot less inclined to do hand-painted customization, since it's so time-consuming and it's difficult to make it look perfect. But for rare cases where the commercial options are not ideal or too expensive, I might still do it from time to time to make certain keys more obvious in dim light or just quicker to find when doing critical work.
Title: Re: Any of you do hand-painted keycap customization?
Post by: fohat.digs on Sun, 07 December 2014, 19:15:48
Mandolin has done some great work.

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=65333.0 (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=65333.0)
Title: Re: Any of you do hand-painted keycap customization?
Post by: lowpoly on Mon, 08 December 2014, 06:11:42
Hi Lunatique. Must have been 10 years or so.   ;D
Title: Re: Any of you do hand-painted keycap customization?
Post by: Lunatique on Mon, 08 December 2014, 15:38:23
Mandolin has done some great work.

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=65333.0 (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=65333.0)

That's a whole other level of DIY.  :eek:

What I did was much more modest--just simple highlighting of specific keycaps like this:

[attachimg=1]

Hi Lunatique. Must have been 10 years or so.   ;D

Hahaha, I always seem to run into "ghosts of the CG past" in other geek-related forums. I run into members from sijun and cgtalk on music/audio forums, photography forums, and now keyboard forum.
Title: Re: Any of you do hand-painted keycap customization?
Post by: dorkvader on Mon, 08 December 2014, 23:33:47
There were a lot of hand painted and nail polish painted keycaps a while ago on GH.

NIQmods did some automotive painted ones. I have some nail polished ones, but I don't know who did them. I can take pictures if you like.
Title: Re: Any of you do hand-painted keycap customization?
Post by: Lunatique on Tue, 09 December 2014, 00:13:38
There were a lot of hand painted and nail polish painted keycaps a while ago on GH.

NIQmods did some automotive painted ones. I have some nail polished ones, but I don't know who did them. I can take pictures if you like.

Yes, I'd love to see some photos. Thanks!