Mancraft 101: Vacation Destination Decal Using the Silhouette Cameo

In anticipation of getting the new (to me) Maker Mobile (a 2009 Jeep Wrangler JK 2-Door), I'm going to be making an insane number of decals with my Silhouette Cameo. I will admit that several of them will be copyrighted images ganked off the interwebs, but this one I designed from scratch.

The image above was made in a generic graphics program. I just drew an ellipse that looked about right, then copied and pasted it, adjusted the sizes to create a smaller white ellipse inside the larger black ellipse. Transfer paper will be used to apply the decal to the Jeep.

You probably have to be a pretty big Sci-Fi movie geek to get the reference I'm making with this decal. I used the one of the free "Aliens" fonts available online to take the joke up a notch, but you can use any font. I've seen Arial or other "sans-serif" fonts and various pirate fonts for Caribbean destination decals.

Here's the video tutorial:

You can scale the image up or down, depending on how much real estate you want the decal to take up.

The settings for the Silhouette Cameo to cut paper-backed permanent exterior vinyl is start with Vinyl (Silhouette Brand) default, then change Ratchet Blade to 3 and Speed to 3.

Confession: I tried to apply the black vinyl to a slightly larger white oval and biffed it. I'm settling on a one-layer decal until I can figure out how to make a multiple-color decal. That may involve a wet application where I use some watered down baby shampoo to act as a lubricant until I can position the top layer properly. Hmmm...

Stay tuned for more decals, mods and upgrades on the Maker Mobile...