Getting Started making your own decals

[nick]

Here's a quick overview of how to go about making your own decals. I'm not going to get into graphic design or what packages to use, this is an example of the common things I do when I make decals, I'm sure there are many ways of achieving the same thing, this is just what I do.

The first challenge is that decal paper is either white - or it isn't! (clear) here's a mixed pack.

So what? well nearly all home printers don't print white, they just leave a space for the white paper to show through, so if you use clear decal paper, you won't get white.

OK so I'll just use white decal paper then. The problem with that is, well it's white, which means that you will have to precisely trim the outline of the decal to it's exact shape. This is fine if it's rectangular or another regular shape, very difficult if you are trying get white stencilling for example.

There are other consideratations too, like yellow and red will always be brighter printed on white than clear.

So what's the answer then? You can either send your design to someone who has a specialist printer than CAN print white, like Paul, or try the fiddle I use:-

Without getting into physics, light isn't like ink, so your monitor emits light, your printer prints ink which reflects light, this is why primary colours are Red, Yellow and Blue for paint/ink and Red, GREEN and Blue for computers.

Again so what? This means it's really hard to get the colours on your screen to match what you print. Modern kit is much better at this now, so make sure you've got the correct colour profiles set for your monitor, pinter and scanner if you have one. use ICM colour matching if you're not sure. If you REALLY want to get this right you need to stump up for something like a Colormonki or Huey (what I use). This is a hardware sensor that sticks to your screen and accurately calibrates it for you.

You don't really need all this to get started, I bought my Huey for photographic use, as long as everything has the right profiles it will be good enough.

So, how do you print white stencilling then? In my recent example I wanted a tank name 'ADAMANT'

The image isn't good enough to cut and paste the name off so I searched available fonts to find a match, I'm just using word here, a large font size and black to see what I'm doing.

Remember this is going to be greatly reduced so an exact match isn't laways needed, I've chosen Cambria Bold here as close enough.

Next paint a small 'swatch' of card with the actual paint of you background colour, vallejo Bronze Green in my case.

Next scan this swatch to get the exact background colour into your computer, doesn't matter what package you use for this

Select this colour using typically the 'eyedropper' and use it to draw a filled rectangle across the full width of a new drawing set to the paper size of your decal paper

I had already measured the height of the model where this decal was going and figured out that the lettering needed to be 2.6mm high. So set your font prefernces to mm not point size and dial in 2.6 with Cambria in WHITE

And that's it print off your decal, I use matt inkjet paper settings rather than 'plain paper' as recomended. Let them dry well, 24 hours ideally before coating. then coat twice.

Cut a rectangle around your lettering as tightly as possible and you should find you have an exact colour match. I usually touch up the edges as well as you may get a white line where you cut the decal paper and this also blends in better if there are slight colour variations.

If this kind of thing is any use to anyone, I can also show how I flipped this logo and made the background transparent:

Nick

Edited April 28, 2010 by nick

[wkennerley]

Great just the type of info I need as I am planning on trying out some decal making and one of them was white!! Any additional info would be of interest thanks

Wayne

[BillyB]

Thanks for that info Nick.

Regards,

Bill....

[Guest snipersmudge]

great Nick Just the job mate many thanks

Pete

[Alex Gordon]

G'day Nick,

Thanks for that,well worth your time and effort.

[pbhawkin]

Superb!

Great lateral thinking there Nick.

Will give this a go for some aircraft decals I have in mind.

Yes, I would like to see how you swapped the tank around, please.

[Giorgio N]

That's very useful info !

I'll try the matt inkjet setting ! I have used these testors sheets and I'm struggling to get decent greens using one of the 6-cartridges epson printers. Maybe your setting will work fine.

[Mark M]

keep it coming!!

[Murdo]

Excellent stuff mate, very interesting! Thanks for that.

If this kind of thing is any use to anyone, I can also show how I flipped this logo and made the background transparent:

Nick

Go on... Show us how you did it!!!

I had a problem similar to this months ago. I lost interest as I didn't have the time to figure it out.

[nick]

Excellent stuff mate, very interesting! Thanks for that.

Go on... Show us how you did it!!!

I had a problem similar to this months ago. I lost interest as I didn't have the time to figure it out.

OK, If I get some time over the weekend I'll cobble something together - It's dead easy really

Nick

[Paul @ Parkes682Decals]

Hi there

Have you looked at my section Parkes682Decals i have a white inkjet printer that prints white on to clear decal

Paul