As I’ve posted before, finding anything Amtrak California is next to impossible. And yes, i’ve contacted Union Station, but haven’t heard anything back from them. So I’m looking to make my own decals. I have an inkjet printer, and have found a ew dealers of the decal paper.
My questions are:
Has anyone had good success creating their own decals?
2)If I am doing white letter decals that will be applied to a blue background, do I get white or clear decal paper?
You cannot print while lettering on an inkjet printer. The only way to do it is to do the printing on white paper, with the area outlining the white in a solid color. I’d suggest doing your own decals is for limited use and probably not suitable for something fancy, but I could be wrong. Colors aren’t all that opaque with an inkjet, will look washed out.
I recently made my own using clear Testors Paper (for inkjet printers, there is a different paper for lasers). Printed them on a HP Deskjet 970 Cxi. That is an inkjet printer. If you need white, you have to print on white paper.
I printed a digital photo of my kids and all of their cousins for a custom boxcar I did for my Step Dad. Turned out pretty well. As previous poster metioned, the color saturation could be better, but the decals are by no means “washed out”. I think for a first attempt they turned out quite well.
The tricky part is the sealing, I got a little too agressive with the sealer and had to reprint the decals and do them again. (Remember this is my first pass at this!). Once they were sealed (I used VitaChrome sealer from my LHS) all was well. Just be sure not to soak them too long in the water when applying or the ink will run as the water works its way through the sealer.
The film is to my eye thicker than professionally made decals and mine took several coats of Micro Sol to settle in nicely. But once settled in with 3 applications of Micro Sol they look good.
I made the decals for an S scale boxcar. I got pretty fine detail, but you probably won’t get exquisite detail in HO. You can probably get a pretty good herald or something like that, but I doubt you’ll have luck printing numbers, etc.
Bottom line- I think I paid around $17 for the decal paper and sealer and had a heck of a lot of fun with my first attempt and definitely plan to do more. In answer to your question #1- I consider it a success.
If you want you can purchase an ALPs printer because its one of the only printers that print white. has to be used because it’s nolonger made, try ebay, the color cartridges are still being made.