r/mermaiding

I used to do mermaiding all the time as a kid, so i‘m fairly experienced. Today i decided i wanted to do some budget-ish mermaiding so i decided on a mermaid Lucia fabric tail and a suntails nunui monofin. Because of the large fluke, I'm also making a vinyl support (60 gauge). Is this a good combo? I’ll obviously upgrade monofins later but I’m hoping this is good for restarting as a beginner-intermediate (i am a strong swimmer and practice dolphin kicks a lot).

Hey yall! I don’t rly want my face on this app so here’s a vid of me swimming w my new Fin Fun Atlantis :)

My ex got me my first mermaid tail, despite me telling him not to because I’m not a strong swimmer. I had to learn to swim formally as a child twice, and got better but never really got that far. Despite this, I did learn the dolphin kick. Fast forward 7yrs and I have been blessed to finally befriend some Mers IRL. I’m not the most graceful and I would still be weary of swimming in deeper water, but I think I could at least save myself.

I’m still not a strong swimmer sadly BUT i’m now seriously wanting to pursue mermaiding especially because I’m doing other character work and learning those skills. It seems like most mermaids have been like lifeguard level proficient in swimming since they were kids. I want to try to take some lessons when I can afford it. Anyone else here who became motivated to become stronger swimmers because of mermaiding? How long did it take? It feels so silly to come across mers who literally just found out about mermaiding after the documentary when I’ve been interested in it literally since the silicone came out. I was only a kid when it did, but I still kind of wish I’d found a way to become a seriously strong swimmer 😩 I guess I thought it was over for me at like 12 or 14 lmao any advice or guidance? I do plan to swim with my mermaid friends eventually :)

I have been swimming at coney island in my tail since memorial day, and a couple weeks was the Mermaid Parade! What a blast!!

I am in progress of making a short film series about mermaids and mental health set for a fall 2026/spring 2027 release date. (Season one is being filmed this summer.)

This is just TEST FOOTAGE which is why the quality and sound is so bad. I’m filming this series on a camcorder from Amazon that my boyfriend got me for my birthday this year and I didn’t use the additional mic that came with the camcorder because I didn’t think there would be any issues with the sound and that it would sound fine. Turns out, I was wrong, lesson learned about audio quality. I will use the additional mic next time when actually filming for real.

Also I want to disclose that I am NOT naked in these clips! I was wearing a strapless bathing suit top and bathing suit bottoms because my little brother was holding the camcorder for me!

The props in this scene are mermaid scale tights that I sewed scales from Finfolk Productions onto and mermaid gloves designed after Feral Workshop’s mermaid gloves. (I am not taking credit for designing the gloves—that is all Feral Workshop’s original design!) I will however take credit for the tights as I haven’t seen anyone else on tik tok or Instagram or Reddit do that yet.

Now, the moment you’ve been waiting for; the tail. The tail was designed using Fin Fun’s custom tail design template online. You can design your own custom tail using either the diy route where YOU draw the scale patterns and colors and everything, or you can do the template version and plug in colors and decals. I did the template version for convenience and because it was easiest for me.

Anyways, my tik tok for my short film series and mermaiding is @solarplaycinema for those who want to watch the series when it’s out on Tik Tok and YouTube someday! I’m so excited to share more progress updates! If anyone has any questions, please let me know in the comments and I will get back to you as soon as I can!

I will post a picture of the actual tail design in the comments if I can figure out how to (this is only my second ever reddit post), so you can better see the colors of the tail! The oasis monofin from Fin Fun makes you go so fast—faster than any monofin I’ve used before!

I really want to be able to swim as my mersona with this tiara in. Problem: I don’t wear a wig and if my hair isn’t braided it will mat to my scalp. Anyway, this is the solution I came up with.

my first mermaid tale was a SunTail mermaid tail, this actually uses my mono from that and then a vinyl insert to move the rest of the fluke, it is amazing