Everyone with a racer knows that as the new race season draws near, everyone is busy painting and lettering their cars. Trying to make them look sharp, even if only for one lap. Trying to draw sponsors by showing off a fancy new paint scheme and boasting months of hard body work. Your race decals can make or break your “vision”. The wrong color decals on a paint scheme won’t stand out, too small a size looks stupid or doesn’t give your sponsor justice, boring fonts are easily forgotten, etc. My Racer will spend months hemming and hawing over his decals…and driving me insane. Ordering decals isn’t cheap, especially if you are lucky enough to have more than one car and/or multiple sponsors. If you want double or even triple layer graphics, be prepared to pay, and for that reason, you better get your colors/fonts/sizes right the first time because there is no going back… unless you’re rich.

Back in the day we used to order our decals. We went to several different graphics businesses and we even ordered some off of eBay. They each had their pros and cons and all were expensive but what choice did we have. Enter, my mother, lol. I can’t pinpoint what caused it, was My Racer complaining about his decals? Were we whining about the cost? Or maybe the idea just came to her but the UPS man brought me my very own cutter plotter one day, courtesy of my mother, and eBay. A few days later, he brought me a heat press lol, though I had no idea why since the two didn’t really go together. From then on, I was our decal man. I had to figure out the software, I had to install and go through thousands of fonts, I had to order vinyl. I had to cut and weed and assemble and resize and re-cut and reassemble and deal with My Racer’s pouty face when they weren’t what he wanted or they were too small, etc. Thanks Mom!!!

It took a while to get the hang of it, thank god it came with a ton of small sample rolls of colors we would never need for us to practice with! Now, as race season rolls around, I am plunged into the depths of the basement cutting, weeding, masking, layering, for hours. My friends know this time of year as “Decal Hell”. My Racer is very particular about his decals and while I cut them EXACTLY as he asks… I still somehow end up wrong somewhere, lol. Check out my 10 Tips for Vinyl Decals post to learn more about getting the decals you really want, and getting them on your car safely. I can ask until I’m blue in the face what color vinyl we need but somehow, on decal-day, I am missing a color that just popped into My Racer’s head… and it sucks! I am lucky enough to have a few friends just up the road from me that can sometimes help in a bind.

I always tease My Racer about how he now uses the same exact fonts for everything on our car year after year. I poke fun, tell him “I know, I know, same blah numbers, same block text sponsors, blah, blah…”… and this year, I was sorry. It’s not that I dislike those fonts it’s just that I spend hours upon hours each season making them and it gets a little boring always cutting the same thing. I should have kept my mouth shut. Now I give My Racer credit, he actually bothered to look for something a little different to mix it up a little and he found a really nice number graphic. The problem arose when I could not decipher what font was used and it forced me to use my cutter plotter software to trace the graphic. Badda-bing badda-boom, we have a fancy new number graphic. We spend some time changing the size so it looks right and then we cut. I mask and layer these snazzy-looking number decals for the roof and both doors. The application mask is transparent, so My Racer can see these layered decals and he is psyched, he really likes the way they came out. He applies them to the car all smiles then steps back to admire his handiwork and BOOM!!! Instant pouty face, he hates them, they look terrible on the car and they are too small.

Honestly, I didn’t think they looked as bad as he thought but he is very particular about his decals and they just weren’t doing it for him. He was taking the car to practice the next day and decided to sleep on it and see how the decals looked while he was on the track. When he came home, his face was the same, it looked horrible from the track. Our signature #78 looked like a 7 and big blob. I went back down the basement to my computer to see what we could do since it was obvious he wasn’t going to leave those numbers on the car. The problem was this, the fancy number he chose was actually a digitally printed graphic that if we wanted to cut it right, we would need at least 3 vinyl layers to break up the number from the drop shadow. They were too small because he didn’t account for the italic font. It took me a really long time to manipulate the drop shadow and add weed sections for the 8 and I took a guess on how much bigger to make them. The end result was SO much better and My Racer was thrilled.

That was like four days of my life there in that post, four days of decal hell!!! FOUR days of My Racer was pouting like a two-year-old… and something like this happens EVERY time. Thank god it’s over… for now.