Creating your own decals

[Jolly Roger]

As a hobby I have been making custom models for over 10 years of Airlines and liveries that had, or have not been produced by mainstream manufacturers.
I mainly concentrate on UK based airlines (past and present ) in 1/200 scale but have made several 1/400’s. To date I have made 178 custom models in 3 scales (7 in 1/500, 87 in 1/400, 84 in 1/200), and replicated 72 Airlines and using 31 different airframes. For all but 1 I have created my own decals and in 2017 I was asked by the Model Airliner magazine to write an article on how to create your own decals and this is the link to that article should you be interested.

https://modelairliner.com/creating-your-own-custom-decals/

l hope the content is of some help if you have ever contemplated making your own custom model

 

[Jolly Roger]

This was the custom model I based the article on

 

[Adrian]

I am not as skilled as you Mike and also do not have a laser colour printer, so I have got some commercial decal sellers to reduce some decals to 1/400. F-Dcal and 26Decals have done these for a SABENA DC-3 and Cambrian Airways Viscount, neither made by any diecast manufacturer.

 

[Jolly Roger]

Nicely done Adrian. Working with 1/400 isn’t easy.

 

[Jolly Roger]

One of the hardest decal patterns I had to create and apply was Go. It took many many hours to get a reasonable outcome.
The Go decal was applied in 3 segments plus some painting to fill gaps.

 

[Adrian]

I always knew you were a 'go getter'Mike! Well done!