Alan from the Duchy of Tradgardland made a comment that it would be nice if we could have miniatures of the medals we have either made ourselves or have been awarded by others. I have been pondering that for a while and finally made a try today. I copied the Ancient and Honorable Order of the Tankard from the Reichduchy of Beerstein blog and then opened my copy in MSPaint. I reduced it down to 5% of the original size, which is pretty darn tiny and then printed it on a laser color printer. Using a magnifying glass, I then cut out the miniature medal and glued it to the chest of my figure for Major General Campbell using regular PVA (Elmer's) white glue. Here is the result:
A close-up of Major General Campbell, OT
And a close-up of the miniature medal on his chest.
While it is not very discernable, you can still tell that a medal is emblazoned on the figure. I think it turned out very well. I'll cover it with some matte glaze to help keep it attached and to protect it.
8 comments:
I have seen metals made out of green stuff. You must have a very good printer. Looks good. Thanks for the idea.
Major General Campbell certainly looks very gallant sporting his Ancient and Honorable Order of the Tankard. Reich Duke Wilhelm is so impressed, he has insisted that the emblem appear on his Guard Horse Grenadier saddle blankets. Thanks for the inspiration...Bill
With inkjet printers it is a good idea to seal the paper with a gloss or matte coat of varnish or lacquer before attaching the paper or transfer, because you may wish to touch up the paint afterwards and water-based paints can make the inkjet pigments run.
My thought is that you might want to use a gloss finish on the medal . . . after all they represent something made of metal and enamel . . . both shiny.
-- Jeff
I'm surprised you got any detail at all doing that. MSPaint is stuck at 72 dpi, which is very grainy.
There's a free program called Irfanview you can download. It's pretty light and just does resizing, cropping, and color adjustments. It will let you change the resolution while keeping the detail, up to the limits of your printer.
After printing, I agree with Herzog about a fixative of some sort. I'm surprised the PVA didn't cause the ink to run.
Interesting idea, another way of doing them would be to use fine permanent marker pens and gold/silver pens; then use a dab of satin varnish to seal.
I need to try this out.
-- Allan
I did use a matte varnish over the medal after the glue dried. Since I used a laser printer I wasn't concerned about ink running as you get with an ink jet printer's ink. I think I will give it a dab of Future tonight to bring out the "gleam" of a metal medal.
Jim
Great tips! I think these ideas beat waterslide transfers because you can get a bit depth to the medal by using thicker paper.
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