I love me the 4 Wheel Drive logos that are on the Willys trimmed JL's. In the future, I may get a couple to put above the JEEP just ahead of the doors.
DIY Decals
- Thread starter jscherb
- Start date
I love me the 4 Wheel Drive logos that are on the Willys trimmed JL's. In the future, I may get a couple to put above the JEEP just ahead of the doors.
OP
The other day I got a promotional email from Cricut offering 50% off supplies, like decal vinyl. While browsing their site, I discovered that they offer material for cutting stencils. Since the early Jeeps (40's/50's and maybe some 60's) had graphics painted on through stencils, I decided to get some stencil material to try.
Many of the early Jeeps had this stenciled on the tailgate:
I'll cover the steps in case anyone is interested. First, I cut the stencil on my little Cricut Joy machine:
Then the cut stencil is "weeded" (that's the term Cricut uses). The part to be painted gets removed. When making a decal, usually the background is weeded away but since this is a stencil that is to be painted through, the image is weeded out.
To transfer the fragile stencil to the surface to be stenciled, clear transfer tape is applied over the stencil:
The backing is then peeled off the stencil and the stencil is applied to the surface which in this case is a piece of the tub left over from when I made my pickup.
Applying to the surface:
Peeling off the transfer tape:
I covered the area around the stencil with masking tape to protect the surface from overspray:
Rattle can painted:
Done.
Looks at least as good as the original stenciled/painted on graphics on early Jeeps.
I'll continue to do most graphics in vinyl, but it's nice to have stencils in my array of possibilities.
Another Cricut project - making patches.
I wanted to try making patches using the Cricut so I ordered some blank patches and did some quick tests with Circut Iron-on material. I just used images I already had, so the Rubicon one is a little incomplete - it should have a hill under the Jeep for it to climb.
I added velcro to the back so I could stick them on a prototype Overland Outfitters Tactical Tool Bag, which has velcro loop behind the MOLLE grid.
These worked out very nicely. A range of different colors of blank patches are available out there, and Cricut Iron-on comes in a wide range of colors, so many different patch designs are possible, including using multiple colors of iron-on on the same patch. These are screen shots from one of the patch places I found on the internet and the colors of iron-on from the Cricut site.
Many of the early Jeeps had this stenciled on the tailgate:
I'll cover the steps in case anyone is interested. First, I cut the stencil on my little Cricut Joy machine:
Then the cut stencil is "weeded" (that's the term Cricut uses). The part to be painted gets removed. When making a decal, usually the background is weeded away but since this is a stencil that is to be painted through, the image is weeded out.
To transfer the fragile stencil to the surface to be stenciled, clear transfer tape is applied over the stencil:
The backing is then peeled off the stencil and the stencil is applied to the surface which in this case is a piece of the tub left over from when I made my pickup.
Applying to the surface:
Peeling off the transfer tape:
I covered the area around the stencil with masking tape to protect the surface from overspray:
Rattle can painted:
Done.
Looks at least as good as the original stenciled/painted on graphics on early Jeeps.
I'll continue to do most graphics in vinyl, but it's nice to have stencils in my array of possibilities.
Another Cricut project - making patches.
I wanted to try making patches using the Cricut so I ordered some blank patches and did some quick tests with Circut Iron-on material. I just used images I already had, so the Rubicon one is a little incomplete - it should have a hill under the Jeep for it to climb.
I added velcro to the back so I could stick them on a prototype Overland Outfitters Tactical Tool Bag, which has velcro loop behind the MOLLE grid.
These worked out very nicely. A range of different colors of blank patches are available out there, and Cricut Iron-on comes in a wide range of colors, so many different patch designs are possible, including using multiple colors of iron-on on the same patch. These are screen shots from one of the patch places I found on the internet and the colors of iron-on from the Cricut site.
how's the print holding up so far? i haven't tried the iron on yet but i'm wondering how it'll wear from being rubbed on different surfaces
OP
When I first got my Cricut almost two years ago I added iron-on graphics to some shirts and I've worn them many times and they've been through the wash after each wearing and the graphics still look like new. While I can't say that there's been a lot of rubbing on the graphics, I'm couldn't ask for them to have held up any better.
awesome thank you for the feedback. my son wants some patches for his golf bag so we'll have a little project to do together this weekend!
OP
Automotive emblems and logos are almost never made using off-the-shelf fonts so if you want to use a font you'll end up having to compromise a bit.
When I was doing the graphics for my Wrangler pickup, I wanted to have "4-Wheel Drive" decal to match the metal emblem that was used on the classic Willys pickup so I scanned a metal Willys emblem with my scanner, imported it into my drawing program and traced it. This image shows the scan of the emblem and my tracing in red:
Sometimes I'll take a photo, being careful to be perfectly 90 degrees and on center so the image isn't distorted, and I'll trace that. Some of the decals on my pickup were done that way, here are the graphics I did for the pickup.
And sometimes I'll find an image file online and I'll trace that. Recently I did a Gladiator logo; in this shot of my drawing program the black one is the image I found online and the red one is my tracing. I separated them for this screen shot so you can see both.
The nice thing about having them in my drawing program as graphics is that I can size them however I need to. Generally I'll make things the same size as the original, for example the Jeep logo to go on the embossing on the side of the TJ's fenders, but if I need something larger or smaller I can just grab a handle on the corner of the graphic and change the size.
If I'm doing something to replicate a factory emblem or decal but might need to change the size, I print a test on my printer and hold it up to the place on the Jeep where it will go to see how the size is. I might do this a few times until I'm happy with the size and then I'll make the decal. I did that with the decal on the rear corner of my JKU, it's a replica of a Jeep factory graphic but I adjusted the size so it looks right:
To cut a decal on my Cricut, I'll save it as an SVG file from my drawing program and import it into the Cricut software.
You probably already know this, but, if you have a long zoom lens, you can zoom all the way in and back up a good ways. This helps remove distortion due to the fisheye of most wider angle lenses.
They're typically based off a common font, rarely is the design team creating truly custom fonts for each model. If you can source and trace the image, that's a great approach. For simpletons like me I just toss it into a font search engine and accept whatever is close.
For example https://www.fontsquirrel.com/matcherator