It wasn’t quite as quick and cheap and easy as I was hoping, but I have painted a new pride flag instead of buying yet another replacement for the one that faded too quickly. Pictured at left is a 210D polyester flag flown about 12 months from June 2024 to June 2025. At the right is a much cheaper one flown about 6 months from November 2023 to May 2024.

My newly painted pride flag between two sadly faded ones.

I bought materials intending to paint a Ukrainian and Palestinian flag in addition to the pride one, so I hope to defray these costs a bit across more than just this flag! Also, I am sad I am still buying things like this on Amazon. I’ve been trying to shift purchasing stuff elsewhere whenever I can. I’m getting dog food from Chewy and the grocery store now at least!

• $33, 3’ by 20’ roll of canvas.
• $42, 12 500 mL bottles of various colors of acrylic paint. It’s not specifically UV resistant, and I couldn’t find any that made me think it was anything special.
• $10 3.5 oz bottle of gloss varnish that I hoped to use to waterproof the surface. This turned out to be stupidly expensive, as it barely covered the front one time. I also needed to coat the back pretty heavily with something, as the canvas would melt in the rain I think. So I got the following:
• $10 12 oz can of Mod Podge and $6 12 oz can of Rust-Oleum 249859 Painter’s Touch 2X Ultra Cover Spray Paint. These seemed to cover more area better and were cheaper overall.

Creating the flag was a little tedious but not too bad. First I had to decide what to do with the ends to prevent fraying. I decided to fold a tube and sew. By the time I got a third of the way across, I ditched sewing and went for the stapler. That worked fine. Then I had to stencil out the stripes, which made me realize flags online are inconsistent with the stripe spacing, especially in the brown/black/blue/pink part of the “progress” design. Then for the actual painting, I decided to freehand it instead of taping off the boundaries. I needed to redo the purple because it came out almost black, so I mixed some white with the second attempt. Then I did the same for the blue, and didn’t for the green but probably should have. It worked well enough, though I realized after it dried I could still see my pencil lines. Oh well! It works from a distance!

For reference, the last two flags I bought were:

• Super cheap $6.99 Progress Pride Rainbow Flag, Durable Gay Lesbian Transgender Bisexual LGBTQ-Flags 3x5 ft for Any Deck, Patio, Porch, or Veranda (Progress Pride Flag), with few details aside from “Durable,Heavy Duty” and “Polyester”.
• Then I tried to “upgrade” to one costing $20.23 (now $22.99). Amazon.com : Progress Pride Rainbow Flag 3x5 Outdoor-210D Sewn Stripes LGBTQ Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender All Inlcusive Progressive Pride Rainbow Flag Vivid Color Polyester Flags with 2 Brass Grommets : Patio, Lawn & Garden. That one says “100% 210D polyester”, which I was hoping was the same as “solarmax” that I liked in the past. Researching it again now, I don’t see 210D mentioned in conjuction with UV resistance. Maybe that’s the problem then.

The first such flag I bought seemed to be better quality than either of these, but unfortunately I left it somewhere during a past pride month. It was $29.25 back in 2016, though now it’s $35. 3x5 FT Deluxe Rainbow Gay Pride Flag With Pole Sleeve and Leather Tab “Fully Sewn Stripes” SolarMax Nylon US Made WindStrong® Commercial Series For Outdoor Use. Maybe the fabric I should be looking for is what that says, “SolarMax Nylon US Made WindStrong® Commercial Series”. I don’t know how quickly it fades or not, as I did not leave that one outside before I lost it. I am tempted to buy this again just so I can test if it’s really my savior, but now that I painted one, I probably should hold off.

One thing I noticed right away is the flag is so glossy, it reflects a lot of light. This is not great compared to the polyester ones. We’ll check back in a year to see how the acrylic one compares to the 210D one.