Homemade decals

[teegeefla]

So I am having to make my own inkjet decals (primarily contingency sponsors) for my 1/43 builds and I have encountered a frustrating problem. With many of these decals there are white sections so i am forced to print on white decal paper. To try and make the decals blend in with the bodywork, I am printing the body color surrounding the contingency artwork. After printing, I seal the decal with gloss/clear to survive dipping the decal in the water. Only problem is that when I trim around the body color around the sponsor logo I get a small but discernible white edge at the cutline. It's either the gloss/clear or the white paper and its very annoying, especially when the bodywork is a dark color. Setting solutions do not make it go away. These decal are so small, usually less than 1/8 of an inch, so cutting perfectly is impossible.

So any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks.

[Bernard Kron]

I've been making my own decals for years. Like you I print using an inkjet printer so I can't print white (or metallics, either). In my experience there's really no good solution that I've found. To begin with, white decal paper is thicker than the clear stuff. That's probably the main cause of the problem. If the paper were very thin the white edge wouldn't be so visible. Since you work in 1/43rd the problem is especially acute, as you point out. From you're write-up you've pretty much done everything right.

The only solution is to print a white underlayment and then print your other colors to clear. If the outer edge of your colors image is darker and the white underlayment decal is slightly undersized the dark color edge will hide the white edge. I just finished some artwork for a hot rod model I'm doing which includes the iconic Von Dutch "Flying Eyeball" motif. The  main color of the car is a weathered worn black semi-gloss. For this reason I'm using a white underlayment so that the white of the eyebal is included, and because the dark body color would bleed through the other main colors (yellow is especially weak in this regard). The graphic will will be quite small on the 1/25th scale model (although nowhere near as small as required in 1/43rd). Below is a graphic showing the layers I will print. I'll print the underlayment to white paper and the other colors to clear:

The only other workaround is perhaps a bit ridiculous, and that's to do only white or light colored cars. But many of us have, at times, resorted to this with good results. For example a Gilmore Oil tribute race car I did had quite extensive decal work. Although it's not white the main color is sufficiently light that I could use clear decals exclusively. Desie thi the white muzzle of the Giomore lion of the rear deck and the white area of the Wico magneto logo both "read" just fine in scale.

[arcticwolf]

Bernard, you just posted my solution, but far more eloquently!
I have found the hard way that even the 2-stage decals I buy, if I cut the white underlayment slightly smaller than the colour overlay, the results look way better (and easier).
Very nice car by the way!