Making custom decals

I can recommend www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk They take paypal and credit cards. They post to Sweden and their service is superb. All you need is inkjet decal paper in either clear or white. I use Corel Draw and Adobe to create and size the decals. Print on "best photo" nothing less. When dry seal with acrylic clear spray and allow to dry. One coat is usually enough.

Here's one I did earlier.....



Good luck. Oh it's less than £1 a sheet probably.

I use the same paper as Chris.
I use a little more acrylic spray tho - usually 3-4 thin coats.

The price is £1.55 per sheet.
Free P&P if you spend over £36.

I very rarely have errors. But it does happen. I usually put it down to an uneven spray of the lacquer.

Heres one i did earlier - all the decals you see are home made.
All done with white decal paper.

Hi Nico,

I found some cheap decal paper on e-bay. Search for buyer cgroberg - very fast service.



This car is a carrera 1/32 ferrari 312PB body on a slot-it PB chassis. decals are made in CorelDraw and printed on a Canon inkjet printer on the above mentioned paper.

Niels, DK

www.racecars.dk

QUOTE (Chrisfromcrewe @ 4 Apr 2008, 21:10) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I can recommend www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk They take paypal and credit cards. They post to Sweden and their service is superb. All you need is inkjet decal paper in either clear or white. I use Corel Draw and Adobe to create and size the decals. Print on "best photo" nothing less. When dry seal with acrylic clear spray and allow to dry. One coat is usually enough.

Here's one I did earlier.....



Good luck. Oh it's less than £1 a sheet probably.

Chris, Gray & Niels

Thanks a bunch, Next time I order decalpaper I will try the one you recommended. It will be great!
So, any acrylic lacquer will work with this paper? Tamiyas "Clear" spray maybe?

I love that homemade Lobster car Chris... really cool! And Gray, well you always end up making nice cars. I have always noticed your nice finish on decals (wich always makes for a better car). Niels, did I misundertood you? Do you mean that the Ferrari is a Carrera car. Isn't it a slot.it car?

Gray, based on what I have seen on your re-liverys so far I understand that you use "clear" decal paper at times. Do you get a satisfactory result when applying clear decals? The color of the car always kill the color of the decal when I use the so called TESTOR clear papers.

Again, thanks!

The spray I use to coat the decals is an automotive clear lacquer that you use to cover metalic paint on 1:1 cars.
Its available in UK from Halfords. But i imagine you must have something similar in Sweden. Chris does one coat i do 3-4 coats.

Clear decals work well but only if the base colour of the car is light enough to take a clear decal.
You see Chris' clear red and black decals worked well on a pink car.
The decal has to be significantly darker than the colour of the car.

Ive had a look at my cars and the darkest colour i have used clear decals on is light orange or yellow. I have used clear decals on red cars but the decal has to be black or very dark blue and even then it doesnt really look right.

I probably use 2 sheets of white decal paper for every 1 sheet of clear.

Also if i use white decal paper on a dark colour I may put two layers of the decal on to make it whiter. Even when doing a gulf car and I put a white roundel on a blue body panel, it looks quite white but if you then apply another roundel over it you really will see the difference.

Another problem is where a decal goes over two different colours, a good example is a gulf car. I will usually apply two decals because you can see the dividing line between the light and dark colours under the decal. Alternatively you can apply a decal, let it totally dry. Then paint the decal white with acrylic paint. Let that dry and then apply another decal over that.



This car used white and clear decal paper. The bonnet decal just had one layer of white decal on it as the gold wasnt that strong a colour. Howeever the roof decal had two layers of decal because it went from dark to light underneath the decal.
The small decals on the gold parts of the car were done on clear paper but were done in bold colours like black and blue.
The small decals on the black back end were done on white decal paper and most of those used two layers of decal paper as one layer appeared grey when near the bright white door panel.

One tip for printing on clear paper when you are using it on a non white car - use the setting on your printer that uses most ink. This gives a bolder decal. I use a "Transparancies" setting.

I hate you Graymalkin. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Decals can be a gateway to limited ability as in my case. Try as I may I just can't replicate the clear white decalling as displayed so brilliantly on that beautiful Newkie Mercedes.

This is my way of improving on the one colour scheme.

Downloaded an image and using Corel Draw 10 resized to match the car. It's amazing how after a time you will get a feel for size without going to too much trouble using scans of the car etc.

This was done with clear decal paper from crafty computer. I cut the decal up into 6 parts and then set it onto the car. The difficult bit was filling in the holes left for the racing rear spoiler so they were not visible. (any advice here would be appreciated). I thought the scheme looked better using the low rear spoiler from the street car.

The essential thing in all this is having a really good piece of software to stretch, shrink and cut the image ready for final use.

QUOTE (Graymalkin33 @ 5 Apr 2008, 08:05) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>The spray I use to coat the decals is an automotive clear lacquer that you use to cover metalic paint on 1:1 cars.
Its available in UK from Halfords. But i imagine you must have something similar in Sweden. Chris does one coat i do 3-4 coats.

Clear decals work well but only if the base colour of the car is light enough to take a clear decal.
You see Chris' clear red and black decals worked well on a pink car.
The decal has to be significantly darker than the colour of the car.

Ive had a look at my cars and the darkest colour i have used clear decals on is light orange or yellow. I have used clear decals on red cars but the decal has to be black or very dark blue and even then it doesnt really look right.

I probably use 2 sheets of white decal paper for every 1 sheet of clear.

Also if i use white decal paper on a dark colour I may put two layers of the decal on to make it whiter. Even when doing a gulf car and I put a white roundel on a blue body panel, it looks quite white but if you then apply another roundel over it you really will see the difference.

Another problem is where a decal goes over two different colours, a good example is a gulf car. I will usually apply two decals because you can see the dividing line between the light and dark colours under the decal. Alternatively you can apply a decal, let it totally dry. Then paint the decal white with acrylic paint. Let that dry and then apply another decal over that.



This car used white and clear decal paper. The bonnet decal just had one layer of white decal on it as the gold wasnt that strong a colour. Howeever the roof decal had two layers of decal because it went from dark to light underneath the decal.
The small decals on the gold parts of the car were done on clear paper but were done in bold colours like black and blue.
The small decals on the black back end were done on white decal paper and most of those used two layers of decal paper as one layer appeared grey when near the bright white door panel.

One tip for printing on clear paper when you are using it on a non white car - use the setting on your printer that uses most ink. This gives a bolder decal. I use a "Transparancies" setting.

Graymalkin,

Its been a while since I've pestered you for information.

Can you tell me how you colour match on the car above, mostly the golden brown? or did you just out very close to the edge (very impressed if you did with the round one)
Thanks

Colin