My latest project is nearing completion ( I'm painting a badly yellowed SE/30 with a Black Satin finish) and I want to put a custom logo on the little guy. My thought was that the simplest way to do this would be with an old school water-slip decal. I took a quick trip to the local hobby shop and they want $4.99 for a single 8.5 x 11 sheet of clear inkjet printable decal material!!

A quick check around the WWW turned up various sources, the cheapest being 10 sheets for $8.50 but the shipping was another $8.95!!!

Any model builders out there that could help me out here?

Aloha, Ken

doesn't seem that unreasonable... maybe cutting one by hand in some vinyl.  the whole water slip combined with inkjet, seems like a really bad idea... it must be hard to keep the ink from running. has anyone actually tried them out?

I've tryed them on a few things before. Depends on the paper really. What could help is taping a peice of printer paper onto the back of the decal paper so if it bleeds though it will go onto the printer paper. I dout it will run though.

Vinyl will do aswell. You can go to Autozone and buy some vinyl decals that come in plain colors and you can cut out what you want.

Decals can be had at any sign shop.  Like FastSigns or, what I have, Sign-a-rama.  I just bring a cd in with the designs on it.  Tell them what size I want and they call me 20 minutes later with them finished.

Price depends on the size of the decal but they're incredibly cheap.  I wouldn't bother with an inferior inkjet printout.

In the world of decal film, there's good film, and bad film. the bad is really bad, and the good is really good. However, be prepared to spend some money on a full sheet of it, as its never really cheap. If it is, you're getting what you pay for.

With that in mind, the best stuff out there is the Experts Choice decal film by the Bare Metal Foil Co. It works exactly as advertised, and really looks professional. The cheap film look like you applied them with flour/water paste. The good part is that for a 3 pack, you'll pay about $7 plus shipping, so its not too expensive. The clear really is clear, and will show latents of your underpainting through the printing. The white, really is white, but you have to trim effectively in order to remove any excess from your image edge.

So for what its worth, this is what I use, and its not steered me wrong yet. And yes, its worth the price and shipping.

http://www.bare-metal.com/decals/decal_paper.html

One last thought. once you've transfered the image over, you'll want to coat it in some decal setting solution from the hobby shop, in order to really set the decal, before you clear coat over it. (you need to, or it'll scratch, duh) Otherwise, the clearcoat may cause the decal to wrinkle.