I started out doing brush touchups on my playfield, but then saw an airbrush for $16 at Princess Auto (the canuck version of HF) so I figured I would try masking areas with frisket and airbrushing the paint on like in Vid's guide. I already had bought all the colors I needed in the Americana and Craftsmart acrylics from Michaels and couldnt find creatix paints even at my local specialty arts supply store so I decided to work with what I had. With a little trial and error I was able to get good results but there were a few things I learned along the way and that thought I would share;

Thinning the paint:

at first I tried a store bought acrylic airbrush thinner made by Golden. This was kind of expensive and sprayed on nicely but took a really long time to dry and stayed soft and rubbery for a really long time and would lift up with the frisket unless left until the next day. Not ideal as I dont particularly like waiting for paint to dry

Distilled Water - water did thin out the paint but it didnt spray all that well and I found it lightened the pigments, some orange I sprayed that matched well when brushed on ended up looking pretty pink.

99% denatured ethanol : this did not mix and spray evenly, but I found it to be the best thing for cleaning the airbrush. A rag with ethanol could even clean fully dried acrylic paint off the playfield if the result was not desirable. this is what I used to clean off all my test blobs after color matching.

Straight 99% isopropyl alcohol - this was the ticket. Colors stayed vibrant when mixed, sprayed on nicely, and dried very quickly with a hair dryer (i found my heat gun on low giving too much heat and sometimes paint would blister..., a hairdryer on high worked better for me). If a piece of lint or something got on when I sprayed it could be easily wiped off and re-sprayed before setting it with the hair dryer. I got in the habit of turning on the hair dryier with it pointed away from the paint incase some lint gets blown out when its first turned on.

If you just add a bunch of the alcohol to the paint it wont mix evenly, you will end up with little chunks that will spray onto your surface or clog up your airbrush. The trick is to get a syringe or eye dropper and put in 5 or 6 drops at a time and slowly mix it in. at first it will seem to get thicker and stringy, but eventually will start thinning and mixing evenly with no chunky pieces.

I also tried combinations of the above, isopropyl with some golden thinner (still slowed down the drying), isopropyl and distilled water (still lightened pigments). Nothing worked as well as straight isopropyl once i got the hang of mixing it slowly.

Doing a few thin coats and drying with the hairdryer after each coat worked better and was dry quicker than spraying one thicker coat. and if I tried to peel off the frisket too soon sometimes some fresh paint would come up also. I got in the habit of leaving the frisket on for at least 30 mins after heat setting the last coat.

It took a bit of time to figure out what works but now I am getting really good results. I hope this info might be useful to anyone who wants to try cheap paints in their airbrush.

isopropyl vapours are not great so it should be used in a ventilated area

i have no problem removing the stencil when the paint is completely dry. its when its still a little tacky/rubbery that it lifts and tears.

Thanks for the input, but I didnt post this looking for suggestions on what else to use. The point is that i used what i had on hand and was able to get good results without having so spend more or get something else. it worked quite well actually once found the thinning medium that worked for me. just trying to offer some info to people who might what to try to work with inexpensive paints.