If you’re a typical snowboarder, you want to be a little unique and stand out on the slopes. One way to do this is with the snowboarding clothing of your choice. However, another very popular way to do this is to paint your snowboard.

You can do it yourself, if you have the time and patience. Basically, to do a good job, you need to go through four steps: prepare the board, prime it, paint it, and seal it.

However, to start with, you will need a good working area. There are advantages to painting both indoors and outdoors. If you have an indoor work area, make sure the ventilation system is good enough to exhaust paint fumes from the area. If your work area is located outdoors, your main concern will be finding a windless area where there are little or no drafts so they won’t interfere with your paint job.

To ensure that the board is clean, wipe any dirt from the surface to be painted with a clean, damp cloth. You will also want to remove any wax buildup. Any good wax remover from your local hardware or grocery store should do the job. Then you want to roughen the surface of the board with fine sandpaper. This will prepare it to receive the primer coat. And finally, cover the joint holes with cotton swabs to prevent paint or primer from clogging them.

Once the prep work is done, priming is relatively easy. just spray it according to the directions on the spray can. Basically though, you want to avoid over-priming the board. So instead of trying to do everything in one pass, if necessary, make several light passes until you’ve covered the board well. The important thing is to keep the spray can moving so you don’t get the primer pooling in spots. Then let the primer dry.

When painting the snowboard, lay down the ground colors first, again using several light coats, if necessary rather than one heavy coat. When you’re happy with the density and colors of the background, you can use stencils to apply any design or logo to the board.

The penultimate step is to seal the board with a clear coat. This is usually a multi-step process, as you’ll want to apply three or four coats to the board.

Finally, to give your dash that nice glossy finish, get some rubbing compound at your local auto supply store and give the surface a good polish.