sticker decal making

[IRISH-RACER-14]

hi, i want to be able to make my own custom decals, how do i go about it? i was researching the net a little but cant get much info. anyone on here who works with this kinda thing

[fastredrider44]

Are you wanting to design your own, or get all the equipment to do them start to finish? Are you wanting to design single color or layered decals, or something that would have to be printed?

[dxcody]

You can design your own and give spider graphix a call and they can print them and send them to you, or you can tell them what you want on them and they can make some sweet looking designs for you if thats what you are asking.

They design all of Jetsuspension's stickers and graphix, and Brian Wolfs graphics and Don Ockermans, and countless others.

They do great work.

[IRISH-RACER-14]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aweZExUc33Q&feature=player_embedded

this is what i want to be able to do, does anyone know where i could get one of those cutters and which programmes would i need for the computer

[fastredrider44]

You need CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator as your design software. Then you need to buy a plotter of some sort, and it will probably come with it's own driver and software to run it. Then you need vinyl, and transfer paper. I've never used a plotter that small, so I don't know how much they run. My plotter is a lot bigger and heavier duty than that, so I don't think that will help you too much. It's quite a bit of an investment originally. I will tell you that vinyl cutting still has a big demand, but printer/plotters is where everything is going. Don't buy cheap crap though. It's like Jinching and Honda dirtbikes. They might look the same, but they're not.

[IRISH-RACER-14]

i was thinking of buying a nice used roland stika. they seem to be popular and parts seem to be easily got on ebay, the price is the downfall.. i wanted to try and make a small business out of this. alot of people are putting stickers on cars now in ireland. theres a guy on facebook and hes making so much money selling stickers. so why cant i do it.. ive seen a few used cutters but the problem is the voltage is different so i would need to get a transformer i guess

[fastredrider44]

In the states, guys come and go in the "sticker makin' business" all the time. Design work and quality products is what will keep you in business. It's not as simple as it sounds. Another cheap plotter that is popular is the Crick-cut or something like that. Its a smaller plotter, but they're cheap and you can expect cheap stuff from it. Roland products are pretty good, but like I said, I have no experience with something that small.

[patrickj75]

I'm starting in the graphics business and the equipment isn't cheap for sure. For now I'm using a friend to print my stuff until I can afford the printer/cutter/laminator. I use Corel Draw X5. Works good for a beginner and was pretty cheap.

[fastredrider44]

I'm glad you're using Corel. That's also what i use. Adobe has some cool features, but it limits how well the file can be altered if every converted to an .eps and used anywhere else.