Making Waterslide Decals

5280 Views 35 Replies 14 Participants Last post by GDSLOT, Mar 16, 2022

NZKevin

Discussion Starter · Sep 3, 2021

I bought some waterslide decals recently, and they were complete rubbish. Four of the sheets were really badly printed, the last time I saw colour printing so bad it was done on a 9 pin dot matrix. One sheet was a little better, so I tried to use it only to discover that the printing floated off the decal along with the backing paper and they look terrible on the car. These were from scalextric-car. co.uk just to be clear, I have previously bought transfers from PSR and they were great quality.

I decided that I may as well make my own, but couldn't seem to find much information here about it. Has anyone done it, and if so do you have any tips you can share? I have found some paper available locally and checked the instructions, I'm using an inkjet so will need to spray them with a clear topcoat. But I'm sure there are probably some do's and don'ts that I should know. Any tips gratefully received.

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PetesLightKits

· #21 · Sep 4, 2021

GDSLOT said:
I have not idea mate 😁, the fact is that also use Word just for writing legal docs so mostly of my work when doing decals is just copy and paste and adjust the size.

I suppose than when printing I could try adjusting printing settings in the printer 🙄

Cheers

You change the output resolution in the printer settings, not in Word.

Reactions: 1

NZKevin

Discussion Starter · #22 · Sep 4, 2021

beardy56 said:
I don't use pdf as I am never sure that I am getting the maximum possible resolution. I can save from my graphics program to PDF at 1200dpi but i do not see any advantage in doing another conversion to the graphics. If I was working from scratch I think I would also use vector graphics as they are so easy to resize but would not do any conversions before printing.

But pdf is a vector format, no need to convert anything at all. It can be used for raster as well, but works best as a vector format.

NZKevin

Discussion Starter · #23 · Sep 4, 2021

Thanks for all the replies, I'm definitely going to give this a go now. Some good tips for me to bear in mind.

RichD

· #24 · Sep 5, 2021

I find that when I convert a document with pictures to a PDF that the quality of the pictures suffers. Jpg uses a lot of compression to save space and may not be the best way to do decals. You might be better off using the .tiff format. When I create a decal sheet in Power Point I can save it as a .tiff. Vector graphics might be even better because those can be resized without introducing jaggies and the like.

EMPO_Z102

· #25 · Sep 6, 2021

Dave D Stevens said:
We used to make our own decals as kids. back in the 60's.
We would find the image that we wanted in a "glossy" magazine, Then.../...

Supongo que muchos hemos hecho algo parecido. Alguna vez pegaba directamente el sponsor en papel al coche o utilizaba cinta aislante de diferentes colores. Pero cuando no encontraba un logo o el tamaño no era el adecuado, lo pintaba.
Al final pintaba todos los logos del coche a pincel. Aprovechando que he subido esta imagen en el tema del 126 C2, así quedaba un coche decorado a "mano alzada".

I guess many of us have done something similar. Sometimes I directly glued the sponsor on paper to the car or used insulating tape of different colors. But when he couldn't find a logo or the size wasn't right, he painted it.

In the end I painted all the car logos with a brush. Taking advantage of the fact that I have uploaded this image on the theme of the 126 C2, so it was a car decorated "freehand".

Frederic

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Reactions: 3

GDSLOT

· #26 · Sep 6, 2021

EMPO_Z102 said:
Supongo que muchos hemos hecho algo parecido. Alguna vez pegaba directamente el sponsor en papel al coche o utilizaba cinta aislante de diferentes colores. Pero cuando no encontraba un logo o el tamaño no era el adecuado, lo pintaba.
Al final pintaba todos los logos del coche a pincel. Aprovechando que he subido esta imagen en el tema del 126 C2, así quedaba un coche decorado a "mano alzada".

I guess many of us have done something similar. Sometimes I directly glued the sponsor on paper to the car or used insulating tape of different colors. But when he couldn't find a logo or the size wasn't right, he painted it.

In the end I painted all the car logos with a brush. Taking advantage of the fact that I have uploaded this image on the theme of the 126 C2, so it was a car decorated "freehand".

Frederic

Nada mal para calcas hechas a mano 👍

Not bad for a hand made decals👍

Cheers

Reactions: 1

NZKevin

Discussion Starter · #27 · Sep 7, 2021

Waterslide paper is ordered, and I've had some fun putting together the first sheet of transfers I intend to make. This is partly for a pair of 1275GT minis that I've been working on and then I just filled the rest of the sheet with generic 70's style stuff that I thought I might use. This is one eighth of an A4 sheet (which is A7), so I'm planning to cut up the sheets if I can get a sheet this size to feed through the printer.

Reactions: 2

GDSLOT

· #28 · Sep 7, 2021

NZKevin said:
Waterslide paper is ordered, and I've had some fun putting together the first sheet of transfers I intend to make. This is partly for a pair of 1275GT minis that I've been working on and then I just filled the rest of the sheet with generic 70's style stuff that I thought I might use. This is one eighth of an A4 sheet (which is A7), so I'm planning to cut up the sheets if I can get a sheet this size to feed through the printer.

Thats a nice generic decal sheet, thanks for sharing🙂👍

42redcat

· #29 · Sep 7, 2021

That looks like a useful set of decals and well-made, too.

I usually make my decals the full width of A4 paper, or around 20cm wide, but I keep the depth as short as possible. Something like 4cm is plenty for most 1/32 cars. I can then feed the full A4 sheet of decal paper into the printer without worrying about changing paper size settings. After printing, I cut off the printed decals and reuse the shorter paper left over for the next time. I find my (Canon inkjet) printer will still feed and print the paper down to about 10cm. If I’m really short of decal paper, I’ll tape the last strip of unprinted decal paper to a plain paper sheet to make it long enough to feed into the printer.

Mike

Reactions: 3

Trevor Ford

· #30 · Sep 9, 2021

I design my decals on Photoshop, arrange them using Word and get them printed on laser decal paper at a local printer who charges £1 for an A4 if I provide the paper. Amazing how many decals you can get on an A4 sheet.Cheap as chips

Reactions: 3

GRUNZ

· #31 · Sep 11, 2021

Hi Kevin
Nice job with the decal sheet here.
In the end, what are you going for? Laser vs Inject? What paper?

NZKevin

Discussion Starter · #32 · Sep 11, 2021

I'm using inkjet, as that is what printer I already have. The paper I have just received is made by "Hayes paper co", don't know how good it is but that's what all the local suppliers seem to sell here.

GRUNZ

· #33 · Sep 12, 2021

Given that you are based in NZ I am curios to see what results you can get.

NZKevin

Discussion Starter · #34 · Sep 15, 2021

The paper arrived the other day and I have had a go at making some decals. I'm quite happy with the results so far.

Car Tire Vehicle Wheel Hood

The number 6 on the door was a sticker that was already there, the other bits are all from my decal sheet.

Grunz, message me you're address and I'll send you one of the sheets I printed and where I bought the paper from locally.

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Reactions: 2

r377

· #35 · Mar 16, 2022

I am trying to make my own decals. Have followed the advise but still look pixelated. I have taken down to a print shop and it only looked slightly better than my home printer.

I have used big images and small images, shrunk them down with no luck.

I used Irfanview, couldn't get ms word to paste. Just downloaded GIMP but looks complicated. I liked Irfanview as it was basic

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2

GDSLOT

· #36 · Mar 16, 2022

r377 said:
I am trying to make my own decals. Have followed the advise but still look pixelated. I have taken down to a print shop and it only looked slightly better than my home printer.

I have used big images and small images, shrunk them down with no luck.

I used Irfanview, couldn't get ms word to paste. Just downloaded GIMP but looks complicated. I liked Irfanview as it was basic

Not bad mate, they look quite good! 👍🏼

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