[Tip] Cheap High Quality Custom Transparent Stickers

[TJJohn12]

So, I haven’t shared these details, but seeing the plethora of locomotives churning out from all you guys of late and the custom livery of many of them, I thought it would be appreciated.

When I was creating my custom Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad cars - and the engines to go with them - I wanted to make sure the stickers looked as accurate as possible but still within a LEGO-ish design aesthetic. I did my research and worked up some SVGs scaled to the proper size. I used LEGO color RBG values, traced historic photos, etc.

But how to print the stickers?

This is where the tip goes afield of what most of us use. No custom printed waterslide sheets. No need for a printer at home. I paid less than $10 and had way more stickers than I needed.

[See these stickers on the loco]

The secret is Sticker Mule. They make an intriguing product I’m using entirely off-brand: clear product labels. The quality is great. They use a white base print with color on top, so color is bright and full saturation. The color was a dead-on match for LEGO colors as well (I used these RBG values). For my Disney trains, I fit my stickers to the basic 3”x3” footprint - but bumping to larger sizes doesn’t up the price much. They send AT LEAST 10 stickers when you order a custom sample - some orders I get include 3-4 extras on top of that.

They aren’t absolutely perfect solutions - the stickers are obviously uncut, so you’ll need to use a razor and tweezers to make sure they get in the right spot. But for the price, I thought the hassle of clipping out the stickers was well worth it. And with so many spares, if it got botched it was no big deal. The train stickers were so good I've branched into other applications:

Hope this can help some of you bring your locos and rolling stock to life economically.

Edited August 7, 2020 by TJJohn12

[LEGOTrainBuilderSG]

Wow! I was looking for a reliable way to get my stickers.

Thanks a lot! The printing looks very precise and sharp. 

 

 

[SD100]

That's appropriate that they print train stickers as they're right next to the tracks.

How did you make sure your sizes were correct?

[TJJohn12]

4 hours ago, SD100 said:

That's appropriate that they print train stickers as they're right next to the tracks.

How did you make sure your sizes were correct?

So, I was designing specifically for their 3" x 3" inch sticker sizes using Inkscape. I set my work-space to 3" x 3", and then dropped small calibration squares into the corners (so that the image always sizes out to full measurements). You can see my calibration squares in the corners of the sticker photo actually. I didn't really discover that bumping up sticker size doesn't make them much more expensive until recently, or I'd have likely designed to 3" x 5" for my rail cars to avoid two-part stickers.

I have a set of cheap digital calipers that help me size parts. Then it's as simple as creating a shape in Inkscape the same dimensions and designing within those boundaries. I've found knocking a millimeter or two off that shape helps a little because Stickermule prints *close* to exact size but not always 100% on. Designing with a little white space at the edges can also really help make sure everything fits. Export as a PNG with the transparency and BAM! it's sticker time. Shipping turn around time is really quick, too. So if you botch something majorly it's relatively cheap enough and quick enough to fix.

I haven't done many stickers that span multiple parts, but if you take the measurements of your target space for the sticker well it shouldn't be that hard at all.