DIY: make your own custom car signs

Den deutschen Text findet ihr HIER

Welcome to my second blogpost as a Spellbinders International Blog Ambassador. In June, I had the pleasure to blog for the well known die manufacturer Spellbinders to make my first blog project, you can find my „steampunk dress form“ here: click.

My blog mates from all over the world have become my craft family over the last few months, and I feel honoured to be a part of this vital and amazingly creative bunch of girls. What we and other designers create for our friends at Spellbinders can be found here: Explore beyond.

After I made the steampunk dress form I have got lots and lots of feedback. So many VIPs of my crafting world came and gave me a virtual hug. I am such a lucky girl! When I talked about this project with the other blog ambassadors we had lots of funny ideas and I said I have to make something bigger, something WE ALL FIT IN! Well… the only thing we all fit in is…. my car!

I still love my Sprightly Sprockets and used them a lot since the dress form. But my car is a girls car, and I wanted to pimp it with some fancy stuff. I found the butterfly set ‚Wonderful Wings‘ in our local scrapstore, that I wanted to buy for quite a while.

For cutting the car signs I went to a local advertising company who also can do adverts on cars with plotted foil. On the back of the foil I found the name of the manufacturer: mactac.com. Before you try to get this special foil please contact your local advertising company. I live in a small village, and I am sure every village has its own company doing foil adverts on cars. Ask them for some foil or scraps. I used this car foil because if a professional uses it, it must be the right stuff! The very kind (and handsome) guy in the company told me the foil will stick!

Then I had to cut my foil. I made as much as I needed, pink and lilac butterflies, plus a few teal ones. With gold and silver foil I have cut the sprockets. Easy as pie! The foil went through the machine like paper, or even better.

Before I have put the cutouts to the car I went to the car wash! The surface has to be absolutely clean, no dust and no grease! To make sure its perfectly clean I wiped the car with windex/glass cleaner just before I have put the stickers on.

My car is pretty old and has lots of blemishes. The cool thing with selfmade car stickers is the fact, that you can cover ANY blemish or scratch! I love it! (More about those details in my upcoming ‚making of‘ post.)

Another really cool idea is to put some stickers across a gap in the car body. For example the fuel filler door: FIRST put the sticker over the gap, THEN cut it with a sharp knife and THEN carefully press the foil around all edges.

This will cause a pretty funny effect, from the distance it seems the gap has vanished, because the sticker is attached over it (hard to describe for me, sorry)

The finished ‚gear‘ looked like this:

I also put some stickers on the fixed parts of the window. Imagine this car from the view of a kid on the back seat…

Then I went wild with butterflies! Believe it or not, but while I have put the colorful beauties onto my car, I had the company of some fireflies who keep patroling around our house during late summer.

Again, I have put some stickers over gaps and on the front window. The neigbour went by and told me he never could do this, because he will get a lot of bubbles in the foil. Well…. I have’t got any! The wings of the butterflies have lots of small holes and no air will be kept under those wings. No bubbles at all!

I have to admit, this project was the funniest I have ever done! My son, age 14, is slightly embarrased to be seen in this car. I can live with that!

PPS: I am so desperate for the new alphabet dies!!! When I can buy them here in Germany (actually no german shop sells them) I will put some TEXT on my car!!! Quotes, funny greetings or even the cars name. Any suggestions for a name?

Merken