Quotes

Life is short, break the rules. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly. Love truly, laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile. - Samuel Longhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

First Decals - Not so Good

I tried out the decals that I made the other day. Overall not a success, I certainly learned a lot during the process. First trying to fill up 8 1/2" x 11" sheets was definitely not a bright move. I could have used a single sheet for the test instead of trying to go whole hog right out of the gate. So here is what I would do I differently:
1) Cut the decal paper down to 4"x6" sheets, photograph size. Plenty of room to print everything I needed to experiment instead of wasting a whole sheet.
2) Double check everything. While the logos look good the smaller versions ended up being elliptical rather than circular. It took me a bit to figure out why the looked a little funny.
3) Cut everything as close as you can to the edge. There is to much decal on the big Switzerland Trail logo.

I'm not sure I like this decal paper. Its suppose to snug down with lighter fluid but I wasn't really seeing that despite multiple applications of the lighter fluid. I was using Zippo, but maybe another brand would work better. The white definitely disappears when you put canola oil over it as stated in the instructions, but then you have oil on the car. Wiping it off seemed to work just fine, but it needs to be the very last step you do or it will start showing up white again.

The yellow lettering is to light and just disappears against the green car side so I'm not sure what to do about that. Other than being a bit elliptical the C&N logo actually looks pretty good. I think I'm going to look into how to work with white decal paper, but I don't want to have to apply individual letters and numbers to the car sides, that will take forever.
\So on to the pictures!

The Boxcar, not bad, but I need to do a lot better on the trimming and the color is to light. I need to darken it up so its a closer match to the car side's. Logo looks pretty good here.

The Coach car before the decals

The first decals have been applied, they definitely dry very white.

You can just make out the decals in place on the upper sill above the windows. I applied the canola oil and the white faded away.

And with the the logo applied. The logo looks good, but there is something wrong there. Oh, its not circular! Oops.
Now I just have to figure out how to do this better.

2 comments:

  1. Although you've had some issues I think your overall design of these was quite good. I hope you can work it out to your satisfaction.

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    1. I think I will be able to. I think I need to try using white decal paper that will add depth to the gold on the lettering for the passenger cars and still look good on the freight cars. If I do that everything is going to need a colored border I think. Which isn't a problem all the freight car decals are like that now.

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