Have you ever wanted one of those custom, Pantone-colored MacBook, but don’t want to pay the guys over at Colorware an $800 premium to make your device look like Jonny Ive and Punky Brewster’s illicit love sprog?
Well, the good news is that you can actually do it yourself in your own kitchen. The bad news is that for most of us, the process is so complicated and so likely to end in user error that while you’ll still save over Colorware’s $800 premium, you’ll still have to spend a few hundred bucks replacing your machine.
Over at Brain Deadlock, you can go through a great DIY instruction set, explaining how to take any old plastic MacBook and dye it the color of your choice using fabric DYE, of all things.
Of course, the whole thing isn’t for the faint hearted. Because the MacBook’s polycarbonate lid and bottom case are all sealed with a gloss layer, you need to actually sand your entire machine to get the dye to permeate. Even then, however, not every part of your MacBook can be dyed, so your keyboard and battery will be the same color. Finally, the whole process involves a lot of heat, which risks your MacBook actually curling up like a shrinky-dink.
Still, if you’ve got an old MacBook lying around and feel like throwing caution to the wind, this seems like a fun project. Heck, I’m tempted to try to find myself an old MacBook and test it out myself.
