painting on awnings

[yvette rutledge]

Help! What can you use to hand letter on vinyl awnings? We used to get a pretreated enamel-receptive banner material so we could letter with one shot directly on the surface, but they don't make it any more. Are there some vinyl inks or paints that can be used directly without primers? We have a local awning company asking me to letter on their presewn vinyl awnings, so changing the material is not an option.

[Mark Summers]

Yvette,
Vinyl inks do the trick for lettering on vinyl awnings. It's been
awhile since I ordered vinyl inks though. I seem to recall they
are pretty smelly. You might try multi-purpose inks also.
I would get a sample of vinyl from your awning people and
do a sample. If you have a sign supplier close by you might
Q-tip some ink onto the sample.

Mark

[David Harding]

Yvette,

Get the sample and try some 100% acrylic paint such as Sherwin-Williams SuperPaint or A-100 or something similar. We letter many Sunbrella awnings using high performance vinyl as mask. The paint adheres tenaciously to the vinyl mask. It might to the awing material. You could also try TiCote, a primer developed by Steve Berman at Chromatic to make vinyls enamel receptive.