Using Gold Vinyl On Customs

So this one is an experiment that probably has potential. The goal was to cut gold vinyl (the same stuff you would wrap on real cars) to simulate a gold mirror finish on selected parts of the design.

The concept was solid, but in the end the process just took too long and had too many steps. But, for those that want try this and have the tools, here’s the journey.

I made my design in Photoshop based on a template of the casting. Then I made a silhouette of the design (so all the colored areas were filled with black. Then I imported the black storytelling of the design into a plotter software, I use a Silhouette cutter, so I just use the software that came with Silhouette. Then cut my vinyl, using the imported template as my shape to cut into the vinyl. So after all that I should have a cut gold vinyl shape that will fit exactly into the colored version of my water slide.

Except it didn’t. The water slide paper scale (what the laser printer reads) is a slightly different scale than what my silhouette imported or exports (never figured out which). So the vinyl didn’t match the water slides. I painted in a few areas to make it work, but all in all is too much work to not get over the finish line.

Also, vinyl doesn’t like to bend around sharp angles. Which makes the whole process rather unenjoyable.