The sign bug seems to have bitten….
No business of old is complete without a few enamel signs.
They started as images downloaded from the web, resized and printed on my laserjet.
Then they were cut out and stuck with pva, to some offcuts of 20 thou styrene sheet. I have an old washing up bowl under the table where my Silhouette is into which I place offcuts. Besides being a tight Yorkshireman, such is the ability with Silhouette Studio to place the object on the cutting mat where you like, you can do test cuts on the smallest of pieces.
Once dry, having cut them out and stuck them last night, I then stuck a strip of sellotape over them as being simpler than messing about varnish something so small. I then trimmed the excess sellotape and cut the signs from the strip that I had stuck them to.
Finally I really wanted them to show their age a bit, because one of the signs has a date of 1911 on it so by grouping they would have been around a while.
The aging was done with the aid of a strong light, a magnifier and a very fine brush along with an enlarged online image of a battered enamel sign as a guide. – My eyes still ache…
7mm scale scratch built enamel signs
7mm scale scratch built enamel signs with a ruler for scale
I scanned them again including a ruler to show just how small they are.
7mm scale scratch built enamel signs with a ruler for scale
And finally I scanned them a third time at a lower resolution to give an idea of how they will look from normal viewing distances.