Nerfed Raider

     A long time ago, in a land far away...   well, actually about 2 months ago, in my front yard, I was waiting for one of my friends to show up and bring the can of black paint I lent him.   I was waiting because I had to paint some guns with a black base coat (one of those guns would eventually become the tiger raider). 

     I was looking at the paint I had and noticed I had a can of red, that I used once and loved, but hadn't touched since.  I also had a couple guns that had base coats on them, but didn't really have any plans.  I doodled on a piece of paper trying to figure out how to make a good looking white and red gun, but every design ended up looking like a candy cane.  

      Out of no where I remembered some stencils that had come with one of the guns I bought recently. I grabbed one at random, it was the nerf logo.  I went back outside, with the white gun, red paint and stencil.  I didn't paint the gun at first, just stood there, worried it would look terrible after I painted it.  I decided whatever, and stenciled the word "NERF" on the gun over and over. And ended up with this.

The gun, much to my surprise, turned out great.

A Vault Hunters Nerf Gun

     A year or two ago, I got the game Borderlands 2, it was easily one of the most fun games I've ever played.   In it, there was a skin for Salvador the Gunzerker.  The skin is called Root for The Home team and is Purple with an orange line going down it (picture below).  I don't know why, but I really love the look of this skin.  A month ago I was standing in the spray paint isle at Menards trying to decide what colors I should get to paint my next gun, I noticed they had the purples next to the oranges, so I grabbed a can of each and got ready to paint a gun.
         The first step to painting the gun was taping up the 2 handles of the raider.  I liked the gray and orange that the handles already had.  Next, I painted the gun orange, and waited for it to dry.  Once it was dry, all I had to do was paint the top orange and remove the tape, I compared taking the tape off a finished nerf gun to opening Christmas presents in an earlier blog post, but this time, it was much more like opening a red loot chest in borderlands 2.  The finished gun turned out great and is an amazing tribute to one of my favorites skins from borderlands 2.

Tiger Raider

     A while ago I decided I was going to try to paint a tiger stripe gun.  My first thought was i would paint a gun all orange and then use tape to outline places to then paint black.  The problem with this, is it takes FOREVER, and uses lots of tape.  I gave up on the idea, thinking it would just take up a lot of time and not turn out well.  A week later I was painting a gun for a friend, when I use spray paint on a gun I put cardboard underneath it.  I had put a piece of tape on the cardboard earlier and forgotten it was there.   The paint covered the tape and the cardboard around it, when I removed the tape it left  a perfect stripe on the cardboard.  

     I ran into my room and grabbed a scissors and tape, I cut pieces of painters tape so the ends of the tap was pointed, and then put them on a gun I had painted all black.  I ran back outside and spray painted the entire gun orange.   A day later the gun was fully dry.  The only way I can compare how I felt pulling the tape off and seeing how amazing the gun had turned out, is saying it was like a 5 year old opening his last Christmas present to reveal an x-box.   Click here to see finished gun.  I wasn't the only one who loved this gun because it ended up selling for $70, considering I bought the gun for $4 and tape and paint only cost around $10 this gun was a huge success and I'm really glad I didn't give up painting it the first time.