July 1, 2005

Today, my order came from Pulsar! Naturally, I couldn’t resist having a play around with a new toy. Fortunately, in the kit, they send you a sample sheet laser printed so you can experiment as soon as your kit arrives. I followed the instructions on the website for making white decals, which were pretty easy to follow. The Pulsar system is clever stuff, using coloured foils that you melt to the toner based print to make the colour you want. For white decals, you start with the black print on the special paper, then send it through some heated rollers with some grey foil. They toner melts and the grey is then bonded to it. You then peel away the grey foil and miraculously, it leaves the grey colour behind where the print is! You then do the same step with the white foil. Next you apply a carrier to the print and then soak it all in water to remove the original paper backing. Spray it with some adhesive and stick it to what you want!

I tried it on a piece of metal I had lying around, and was quite impressed with the whole deal. This stuff is a lot less delicate than the Letraset stuff I tried previously and is much more resistant to scratching off. In fact, it seems so much better that I decided to go ahead with this method of transfer and forego the clearcoat. The transfers can have all types of finishes, glossy, satin, metallic, holographic. It’s amazing!