After spending a while matching the background colour of the decals to the blue of the van (I lightened the original blue with a hint of Coach Roof Off White RC417), the decal was ready for printing.

One tip to save using a full sheet of A4 decal paper; print the decal out on normal paper at draft quality, then cut a portion your decal paper to overlap and match it and tape it the decal paper over the draft printout being careful to leave enough around the edges to prevent the tape from being printed on. Be sure to smooth the tape out so there's nothing sticking up for teh printer to catch on. Then use the draft printout again as a template and run it through the printer again. It should just print on the decal paper. Three coats of Humbrol Acylic Gloss Varnish Spray were then applied to seal the ink onto the paper and it's ready to use.

One coat of Klear was added to the areas that will recieve the decal. Once dry, a coat MicroSet was applied and the decal cut out and placed in cold water for twenty to thirty seconds until it started to slide about on the backing paper. The decal was applied to the Van, and MicroSol added to soften it. After a short while, I used a cotton bud to press it home and clear the excess water.

So, what's with the white border?

That could be a couple of things but mainly I think because the water, the MicroSet or the MicroSol is dissolving the ink leaving the plain white decal film visible. This could be due to..

• Not enough acylic varnish.
• Hp Ink is unsuitable for this.
• Too long in the water
• Too much MicoSol / Set

One fix would be to paint the borders blue, but that's only treating the symptons and not a real cure. I did think to cut them out first, then give them more coats of varnish so the edges would be sealed. When I tried this, rather amusingly the spray shot them off the workbench and into the bin. I only found one of the little bu66ers so now I need to print some more off to see if this works and this time I'll stick them to something first.

MicroSet did a grand job off helping to remove the ones in the pic, and white borders aside, I think they look quite good.

The backup plan is to ignore the borders, and mask off the panels and weather over it including the borders so it appears as if the panels have been freshly applied over a dirty van.... ahem...