Sorry if this has been brought up before. I was wondering how to make your own decals. I have a 1/43 Chevy Suburban I would like to model after the vehicle I drive at work. (Fire Dept.) I have the clip art of my department and would like to make decals for the doors. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
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Copy your clipart into powerpoint. Activate the ruler toolbars and resize the art to the correct scale. You can print it in a laser printer using clear decal paper bought on ebay for about $1-2 per sheet.
If you are trying to do a dark model with light colored decals, you are going to have to pay somebody with an alps printer to make them.
Martin is right.
If you print using either an ink jet or laser jet on clear decal paper the decal will not show up on dark colors. Some manufacturers sell 'white' decal paper. This is paper that will dry white after printing. Some issues here - you will need to precisely cut out the decal or you will show white on the edges - you can't print text only unless you want a white background - and the paper I use always tends to have the color near the edge peel off leaving some white during decal placement.
For decals on dark colors I have been buying from Stan Cedarleaf (SCedarleaf@aol.com). He uses an Alps printer. I have had zero issues using Stan's decals but the sheets are fairly expensive - $30/sheet. So if you want to purchase make sure you fill the sheet with as many decals as you can get away with. Stan will give you the border details.
Some samples of Stan's decals are shown below
Joe
This is not the way it's done. If you are using a graphics program such as CorelDraw, you would match the object's background color and use that color as the background to your decal. Precision cutting is unnecessary because the decal background now matches your object background color. Same with Text. There is plenty of information available on this process using inkjet printers and white decal paper, for anyone interested in becoming skilled in the application.
--Bob Di Stefano
Bob:
I have done what you said but still did not like the results. The background color never really matched the object so I ended up with contrasting colored borders. For example I would print white text on a black background then place a red border around the black and use on a structure painted black. The border looks nicer than the edge effects of black on black.
If you could post some samples of what you are talking about I would appreciate.
Joe
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