[David G4EBT]

In another thread it was said that 'you can't print white lettering on waterslide transfers' ('decals').

It's true that you can't print white onto clear decal paper, but you can easily create white lettering on a solid background colour using white decal paper. If you have the luxury of a good quality scan - say of a maker's logo - white lettering on a gold background, perhaps with a black border or whatever, you're home and dry. The printer will apply colour everywhere on the decal paper that isn't white. Hence, when that is decal is applied, all the white areas on which no ink (or toner) has been applied - lettering or whatever - will appear as white, just as though white ink/toner (which doesn't exist on normal printers) had been applied.

If you don't have the luxury of a good scan of an image and had to create one, or if you wished to create decals for your own homebrew projects, which model makers do all the time, using MS 'PAINT' or whatever, you simply use black text in whatever font you wish, draw a shape of your own choosing around the text, then use the 'Select Image' facility, right click on the image, and left click on the 'invert colour' tab in the drop-down menu. That will create a 'negative' on the image, so everything that was black will now be white. In other words, you'll have white lettering on a black background.

It's unlikely that you'll want a black background, so the next stage is to select whatever colour of the rainbow you want, then use the 'paint-bucket' tool to pour your chosen colour as the background. The white lettering will stay white. You'll also need to pour 'paint' into any closed letters - 'O, P, Q, R, A' . (Trivia: Hull is the only English football club which has no closed letters!).

To show what I mean, I've quickly drawn a sheet of examples in 'PAINT', (about ten minutes work), using the fictitious and unimaginative name 'TAYRONICS' to create a simple logo to show the stages. The shape can be anything you care to draw and whatever size you wish, within the limits of your printer and paper.

Having created your decal, there is a skill involved in applying them, which I've mentioned in other threads. If you try to slide the transfer off the paper, (they are after all called 'water-slide'), you will fail - the transfer will wrinkle up. You must always place the transfer still attached to the backing paper, where you wish to place it, then you slide the backing paper from beneath the transfer and smooth the transfer down. It helps to wet the surface to which it's being applied, so you can slide it about a bit to get it exactly located before you smooth it down permanently . Once smoothed down, they're very durable and need no protection, though if desired, can be sprayed with clear acrylic varnish, (which you need in any event to seal the paper after printing).

Hope that helps.