Whenever I see someone in the forums asking how to source decals for a bike, I weigh in with “just make your own!” Upon reflection, it might be more helpful if I show how I have gone about it in case it helps someone give it a try.

I don’t claim my way is the only way, the best way, or possibly even the easiest way. It’s just how I have done it so far. I have seen examples of great-looking decals that other forum members have made, so I’m sure there are other ways to do this. And each time I make decals, I try to evolve how I do it based on what I learned in prior projects and from other people.

It's probably also worth mentioning that I just do these for myself. I don't sell them and I'm not looking to start. You may decide anyway that they are not saleable.

Making a Set of Decals

I’ll walk through a recent project to show how I made the decals for it. This was a bike frame that had paint I couldn’t rescue. Thus, I found myself having to strip it down to bare metal for a repaint. This meant I would be recreating the original decals,

First I Took Photos. Lots of Photos.

Before I stripped the paint and decals off the frame, I took pictures of all the decals, trying to get head-on shots of everything while trying to introduce as little camera-position (perspective) distortion as possible. While drawing the new decals, I can generally compensate for distortion from the curve of the tubes if I haven’t made things worse with perspective distortion.