Does Anyone Have Experience With Printing Decals With An Inkjet Printer?

[Flintlock76]

Let me tell you what happened.

I printed some decals with Hobby Lobby decal paper, specifically the clear transparent sheet type, on my inkjet printer.  It looked good, but when I applied the decal to a black locomotive tender the lettering disappeared, that is it wasn't visable at all.  I made sure I sealed it properly but the yellow lettering just wouldn't show up against the black background. Strange. 

Does anyone have experience with printing decals with an inkjet printer who can advise me as to what brand and type decal stock to use?  I'd appreciate it. 

 

[pennytrains]

You're going to have to create a new decal with a big black box surrounding your yellow lettering so you can use the white decal paper.  With the clear, your printer won't make the lettering opaque enough to show on a black background.  They come out transparent.  Unfortunately you'll be stuck with black stripes that probably won't match your paint job.

[Flintlock76]

Thanks for the advice Becky!  If anyone would have known I was sure it would be you!  

[Leverettrailfan]

I think this has something to do with how ink jet printers make colors show up on the paper- they actually use the white color of the paper as part of printing colors- there is no white ink. So if the yellow is supposed to be very light, for example, it probably will assume it only needs so much ink, and the white of the paper combined with that ink will show the correct shade of yellow. But if you put that ink on something CLEAR, then in place of the white, whatever else goes behind it will show through. If that color is black, well... then the yellow won't really show up. 
There absolutely are printers that can print 'white', but your run of the mill household inkjet printer isn't one of 'em.

Feel free to fact-check, this is just off the top of my head from when I was researching doing DIY decals several years ago.

-Ellie

[pennytrains]

That's exactly right.  Most of the printers I've seen that can do white are commercial laser printers.  I DO remember a friend having a decent laser printer in the 90's and I bought some metallic foil sheets at CompUSA (remember them?) that worked with laser printers.  What you did was print what you wanted in black, and then you would feed both sheets through again.  By telling the printer to do a "blank page", the heat of the laser would fuse the metallic ink to the previously printed black toner.  It wasn't cheap, but it really looked cool!