Waterslide decal paper resource

[crayonboi]

*snip*

In my experience if you want to print a light colour onto a dark torso always use white decal paper

with any sort of paints or art Always print dark colours onto light colours, It is much harder to match white to white than black to black on decals.

The general rule is to not try to print a light colour on a darker background.

Hope this is informative.

~Liam

Alright! Thanks! Will try it out.. :)

Cheers

[crayonboi]

I got a question, i have tried using the clear water slide decal from this brand called 'The magic touch' and the clear water slide decal material feels like a plastic film, which i feel it is good and durable for me to adjust the decal to the correct position before i squeeze out the excess water/solution.

But i have purchase some White water slide decal from Ebay recently, but the decal feels like paper finishing, instead of the plastic film feel. Is it suppose to be like that? (I'm not sure about the brand of the white water slide decal as there is no indication of it)

The papery decal is not easy to handle as it gets winkle easily whenever i tried to adjust the position or the paint will peel off if i put too much force on it when squeeze the excess water out.

Can some one advise me if the white water slide decal is suppose to have a plastic film feel? like the clear water slide decal?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers

[coot83]

Crayonboi,

I just got done using some white water slide decals and mine required me to print them and then put 2-3 coats of glossy acrylic clear coat on them. After that, then I would submerge the decal for 45 seconds and then it would slide off. Mine would still have a somewhat of a paper texture to it similar to what a plastic model decal felt like. Anyway, after applying the decal and letting it dry, I would then hit it with a decent coat of gloss again which gives the decal a uniform gloss look to it which in my case cleaned up the presentation. Not sure if your results are similar to mine, but if anything make a decal and spray some clear on it and see what you get in the end result. From what I understand, some of the decal paper companies make theirs with a nice gloss sticker type of finish and some require you to apply it afterwards, hopefully just some clear might fix your situation.

Coot

[KingPixels]

Hi guys,

Hope I'm not resurrecting a dead topic, but I'm curious what counts as a dark colour and what counts as a light colour. For example, would dark red be dark and regular red be light? Thanks.

[Ruse901]

I know this is an old thread but thought I might try here first.

I am having trouble with my inkjet waterslide decals. Every time that I put them in the water, the ink runs. I have tried, waiting, coating them with Decal Bonder as well as Micro Set. For some reason I just can't get the ink to stick. Any thoughts or tips? I've watched and read every guide but I just can't get it to work...

Thanks.

[MAB]

Have you definitely got inkjet waterslide paper and not LaserJet paper?

[Ruse901]

Yep. I think I'm going to try using a laser jet printer instead and seeing if that works better. Maybe I just need to let the ink dry longer on the inkjet ones.

[shiftaltcmd]

Most inks are waterbased. Dont soak the prints more than necessary.

Right paper is essential.

[MAB]

Most inks are waterbased. Dont soak the prints more than necessary.

Yes, and also make sure there is a decent protective waterproof layer on top. I use three light passes of acrylic spray, rather than one heavy one.

[Ruse901]

Thanks for the help guys! I used a decal bonder spray with the three layers and it worked much better.

[MAB]

It sounds like your first attempts didn't seal properly then. Thin multiple coats seem to seal better. Good luck!

[w00kiee77]

Hi all,

First time poster, first time customiser here with a water slide decal specific question, hoping i have enough detail and not going over older stuff, I can't seem to find anything that mimics my problems and hoping that someone will read and go "well, that's just because of XYZ!" (I'm a glass half full person, obviously! :) )

So I'm making custom basketball singlets for a bunch of players from our Australian national league, nothing official, just trying to combine my two bigger passions, so I bought my injet water slide decal paper, followed the awesome Adobe Illustrator tutorial, did a couple of test prints on normal paper, but each time, some of the non-black colours came out very dotty, like there wasn't enough ink. I bought new colour and black inks, and still have this problem, so I thought I'd just bite the bullet and do a print on the water slide decal paper, with mixed results...

the blotchiness here is not jpg compression, unfortunately...

Would anyone be able to hazard a guess as to whether this would be caused by poor water slide decal paper (it's definitely for inkjet) or just because it's a crap printer that can't mix the colours properly (I'm trying to match up to lego specific colours)?

I've watched heaps of tutorials and they all seem to come out really well, but I'm assuming this is because they're printed on a laser printer, as when I print on normal paper on the work Laser printer, they come out much richer and "thicker" if that makes sense?

Perhaps it's because of it being clear water slide decal paper? I coated it 3 times after printing with the right spray and the colour doesn't run, but when I've tried placing them on the minifig, orange and purple based ones on yellow torsos and a green one on a dark brown torso, they were still too transparent... Is this a common thing with clear decals and I should be using white ones?

That would sort of makes sense, as the below is the sheet that I need to print out, and white is fairly common among them all...

so I can just crop them close and it should all be fine on white?

Sorry for the long winded post, I'm just trying to figure out if the problem I'm having will either be fixed by using white base decals, or a laser printer or both? I've read that dark colours on dark pieces aren't good for transparent, but with needing to do several figures for African-American players, I sort of want to use the brown torsos to get a more authentic feel... I've gotten some good traction with the pre-decal shots of the figures (using the normal paper laser printed ones blu-tacked to the figures with the right hair, etc) from the players themselves as well as their fans and I really don't want to let anyone down with doing a poor print job...

Any paper and/or printer help if applicable would be very much greatly appreciated :)

[Jackad7]

Does anyone have recomenations on where to get waterslide inkjet paper? I can't seem to find any good paper on amazon.

Does anyone have recomenations on where to get waterslide inkjet paper? I can't seem to find any good paper on amazon.

[Robianco]

Hi all,

First time poster, first time customiser here with a water slide decal specific question, hoping i have enough detail and not going over older stuff, I can't seem to find anything that mimics my problems and hoping that someone will read and go "well, that's just because of XYZ!" (I'm a glass half full person, obviously! :) )

So I'm making custom basketball singlets for a bunch of players from our Australian national league, nothing official, just trying to combine my two bigger passions, so I bought my injet water slide decal paper, followed the awesome Adobe Illustrator tutorial, did a couple of test prints on normal paper, but each time, some of the non-black colours came out very dotty, like there wasn't enough ink. I bought new colour and black inks, and still have this problem, so I thought I'd just bite the bullet and do a print on the water slide decal paper, with mixed results...

*snip*

the blotchiness here is not jpg compression, unfortunately...

Would anyone be able to hazard a guess as to whether this would be caused by poor water slide decal paper (it's definitely for inkjet) or just because it's a crap printer that can't mix the colours properly (I'm trying to match up to lego specific colours)?

I've watched heaps of tutorials and they all seem to come out really well, but I'm assuming this is because they're printed on a laser printer, as when I print on normal paper on the work Laser printer, they come out much richer and "thicker" if that makes sense?

Perhaps it's because of it being clear water slide decal paper? I coated it 3 times after printing with the right spray and the colour doesn't run, but when I've tried placing them on the minifig, orange and purple based ones on yellow torsos and a green one on a dark brown torso, they were still too transparent... Is this a common thing with clear decals and I should be using white ones?

That would sort of makes sense, as the below is the sheet that I need to print out, and white is fairly common among them all...

*snip*

so I can just crop them close and it should all be fine on white?

Sorry for the long winded post, I'm just trying to figure out if the problem I'm having will either be fixed by using white base decals, or a laser printer or both? I've read that dark colours on dark pieces aren't good for transparent, but with needing to do several figures for African-American players, I sort of want to use the brown torsos to get a more authentic feel... I've gotten some good traction with the pre-decal shots of the figures (using the normal paper laser printed ones blu-tacked to the figures with the right hair, etc) from the players themselves as well as their fans and I really don't want to let anyone down with doing a poor print job...

Any paper and/or printer help if applicable would be very much greatly appreciated :)

Most printers these days can handle photo quality so you should get a much better finish than that. Either the paper is crap or you may just need to mess around a little with your settings on your printer with regards to telling it what kind of paper you're printing on and what quality to print at.

I've had photographic paper that just didn't look great in the past... then the same printer and ink produced fantastic results on different paper. Unfortunately it just happens at times.

Does anyone have recomenations on where to get waterslide inkjet paper? I can't seem to find any good paper on amazon.

Does anyone have recomenations on where to get waterslide inkjet paper? I can't seem to find any good paper on amazon.

I'm not sure if you're in the US, UK, Europe etc but I wouldn't worry too much about the paper on your first order. Just don't spend over the odds on some. Maybe try this:

http://www.amazon.co...ide decal paper

Then get a good acrylic spray. I've found that Gloss is too shiny but Satin has worked great:

http://www.amazon.co...D2527VCSFN6NK2S

Then it's just down to your printer and your skills cutting them out.

I used to spray the whole torso a couple of times with a thin coating once the decal was on it to help seal everything and I've still got a couple of torsos that I did several years ago that still look good.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Robianco

[nine09nueve]

My 2 cents

Clear paper is hard to get good colour saturation - so maybe try for the white backed decals...

Echoing Robianco have a look at the quality of the file that you're exporting out of illustrator and your print settings...

You really want as high a pixels per inch as your computer and printer can handle... And also consider telling the printer you're printing on high quality... And you could even try and increase the colour saturation too... But start by having a good play with big standard printer paper (or even normal white sticker paper until you are happy with the results... And then tweak the settings on your final decal paper.

Hope this helps

D

[jasper44]

Hey gang, First time poster, longtime lurker, longtime customizer coming back after a few years off with kids, work, life, etc..... I haven't had a home printer in a few years, or access to any design programs either. I've been chomping at the bit to get back into customizing. I used to do a lot of GI Joe customs, using waterslide decal paper, so i figured I'd jump into this thread to get my feet wet again (no pun intended). I see a lot of pad printed stuff, and digital printing now. That wasn't even a thing when i stopped customizing, I have some catching up to do.

Anyhow, I got some good info and links from this thread, thanks for that. I'll be sure to post some updates and customs as soon as i get rolling again.