So, we - a group of us - play various games centred around skirmishing and battles. These are primarily cyberpunk based, though once in a while we foray into a different genre. One thing that I find takes up the most time is painting buildings and street furniture (bus stops, underground entrances etc) first with a colour scheme and then painting graffiti or other art onto them to "dirty" them up a bit. I've tried the water slide decals for ink jet and while they work, they're limiting in that you can't easily remove them should you want to. Mind, the same applies to pain to be honest, and that's another thing that I find annoying. Once something has been decorated for a game system, that's it. If you want to use it in something else you have to try to ignore what's been done to it. Or, print another one. Then my daughter - who has enjoyed stickers since she was a small person asked me why I don't use stickers. I confess I laughed a little bit and mentioned how nobody makes them. Yes, she says with that expression which means I am going to get a lecture. In short it was "why don't you make your own". Good question, because I don't know how. Logic applies. I need a relatively fine sticky vinyl. My first thoughts (and attempt) was to use a plain white sticky back vinyl from the hardware store. While this worked up to a point, removing the sticker left a bit of a mess behind and it either lifted the paint off the model, or destroyed the paint on the vinyl. Then while browsing through Amazon looking for another pack of decal sheets I stumbled on these. Vinyl sheets for an ink jet. It's no great loss to try them out, and what is the point in having an expensive photo printer if I can't use it for other stuff? So, I ordered a pack, even if it doesn't work out for what I want, I can always print a bunch of stuff for my daughter - who claims one is never too old to play with stickers. I have to say I was very surprised, and very pleased at how well this actually worked. I got a bunch of "cyberpunk" posters, adverts and other assorted things, sized them for the buildings and advertising panels that litter the models, and then cut them out and stuck them to the various places I wanted them. The longest part of the whole task was cutting things out. Some of the graffiti is rather complex. The vinyl peels off without damaging the underlying model, and without leaving a nasty sticky residue. You don't even need to varnish the stickers like must be done with the decal sheets. They have a glossy slightly sticky surface that the ink adheres to very well. I haven't tested these to see if they survive immersion in a liquid but honestly I don't see that happening for me. So, happy days. I have re-discovered the joys of playing with stickers. The nice thing about this is that I can easily find images I want to use, edit them in GIMP to create the flyer/poster/whatever I want. Then add those images to an A4 sheet in GIMP and slowly fill that sheet until I have enough to warrant sending to the printer. This takes a great deal LESS time than painting things onto the buildings and bill-boards. It also means I can remove them and change them for something else over time. Or, completely re-design things for a different game - and do so without taking weeks to prepare. I may however, simply print a second model of the buildings I want for our other games and paint them differently to individualise the game board rather than having replication of colour schemes. Which means simply printing a different sheet and attaching those. No further work necessary. And weeks worth of time saved that I can use for more productive things - like actually doing some of the odd-jobs around the house that I have been ignoring. You only get 20 sheets to a pack, which is a shame as I could certainly use more and would pay for larger packs without hesitation. This product has saved me so much time it has pretty much paid for itself. This product is about as close to perfect as I've encountered. It can be used to create sticker books to keep young people entertained on rainy weekends, you can use it to decorate plain tiles, cover books or any other task you can imagine for stickers. I just rather wish I had discovered this a few years ago, it might have saved me a year or two in time. I will definitely buy this product again when I need some more vinyl. This is so easy to use it's ridiculous. Great product, good price and it works flawlessly without fuss.
