Water slide decals and clip art?

[Chris Kurtz]

I have some water slide sheets coming in both clear and white that I plan on making some custom decals for the boats. Has anyone tried this and what do you use for a program to create your decals? Any good places to look for some sort of clip art or images related to the R/C hobby? In a quick search I really haven't found too much.
From the YouTube videos I've watched it seems to work pretty well if you clear coat the decals before you transfer them to protect the ink then clear coat them after they are on the model.

 

[WikiWiki1]

I have made these in the past for very small lettering on scale boats. Mostly driver names and very small graphics that I couldn't find in vinyl. The waterslide paper I used was basically just a base to hold the adhesive. The "body" of the water slide was the clearcoat. I just printed them on my inkjet then sprayed them with several coats of krylon crystal clear acrylic spray paint. The trick is to put on the first coat of krylon thin enough to not attack the injet ink so much that it smears. once the first coat is on there and flashed off it's not as delicate for the follow on coats. Print several and mess around with it till you find the correct process. I always spray the boat with polyurethane clear after the decals are on to protect them other wise they just come off in water.

Brent

 

[Chris Kurtz]

Yeah that is what I was planning on doing too. Thanks for the tips.

 

[RobertDoak]

This is an interesting topic...i also have wanted to do the same...any info please pass on...

 

[Chris Thomas]

Also looked at this - Show us results if possible...

 

[Paul Dadswell]

All of these are water transfer decals. Stoled images off the Internet. They were printed on an inkjet printer then sprayed a light clear coat over them. After you cut them out I found it necessary to re-spray the edges so the water will not bleed the ink out. A little bit still happened to me in this application.

 

[Chris Kurtz]

That look great Paul. What program do you use on the computer? Something like paint? or a photo editing type?