Skin Makeover Plan #6: M4A1-S | Fade
The Fade Series has always been one of the most popular skin lines among players—so how can you customize and dress up this clean color-based finish to make the skin look even better?
About the handguard:
A lot of players don’t like the black handguard finish on this skin, so how can you use stickers to clean it up? There are plenty of large stickers in the game that can cover the handguard area, so let’s look at the crafts that work best.
Fade Handguard
Turn the handguard into a flashy gradient handguard. For this craft, you’ll need five Frag Out! stickers. This gradient pixel sticker has strong color shifts and a retro pixel style. Use a mix of normal and reversed placements to cover the black areas. Apply all five across the handguard, and you get a skin with a colorful handguard! Since the only difference is the top/bottom angle, the color shift stays the same.
Warm and Cool Backlight Effects:
Rainbow handguard
Cover the handguard with a rainbow! The rainbow area isn’t large enough to fully cover the handguard, but the sticker’s colors stand out, so you can use it to cover one strip of texture down the middle of the handguard area and draw the eye! For the center of the handguard, you only need three Rainbow Trail stickers to cover it fully! For the two remaining sticker spots, pick two Like Minds stickers to make small holo hearts and add more texture.
Also, the Rainbow Trail sticker pairs really well with the colorful skin itself! You can use this bright rainbow sticker to craft a rainbow trail on other parts of the skin. For example, players often use:
Weapon Pattern: Rainbow
You’ll need four Rainbow Trail stickers to build out the body of the rifle, and the colored question mark above the magazine is this sticker’s fully scraped Easter egg.
Besides the horizontal rainbow, the rainbow effect from other angles also looks great:
Super Large Iridescent Heart
Oversized Series: this “Classic CS (Holo)” sticker is already huge, and using it for a craft makes the setup absolutely massive. Pick three “Classic CS (Holo)” stickers and rotate them so the pointed tip faces down. Place the bottom one first to lock in the position, keeping it as far right as possible while making sure there is still enough room for the pattern. Then place the other two along the texture, one on the left and one on the right, to complete the big heart craft. This sticker also has a retro style and the same orientation, so when you put three together, the color-shift direction stays consistent and blends into one. The full-color shifting effect looks great!
A Little Heart for You
Backlight:
Rainbow Four-Leaf Clover
Could crafting a four-leaf clover make you a random-spread beneficiary? For this setup, you need four Like Minds stickers. Scrape them down to reveal four hidden heart details, then rotate and place the four hearts so each one becomes a clover petal. Combine all four and you get the full four-leaf clover craft. Since all four stickers point toward the same spot, the color-shift effect runs from the inside out—or from the outside in.
Hot Feel
This solid-color finish also works really well with a flame-themed craft. Place five Hot stickers on the suppressor, handguard, receiver, and magazine, and enjoy that fiery look and feel!
Vitality Star
Large setup — use four Team Vitality stickers and one Complexity Gaming (Holo) | Stockholm 2021 to craft a large five-pointed star. First, choose a good spot and apply the COL sticker, then place the Team Vitality stickers around it. Put the four stickers around its four corners; the remaining corner can’t take a sticker, but the look is already strong enough. I recommend the Paris 2023 Stickers here: they look great and stay affordable. With the Paris 2023 Holos, you can also fully scrape off the event logo.
Related Skins:
https://buff.market/market/goods/cs2/M4A1-S%20%7C%20Fade%20%28Factory%20New%29