Before getting into the vinyl graphics business, I wasn’t quite sure how die cut decals were applied. How did they get the phone number so direct on a truck? Or how was that intricate die cut logo applied to a wall allowing the wall color to show through?

Now, having been in business for over 16 years and understanding the process, I forget that our consumers don’t always understand how their custom wall decals are made. I thought about trying to explain how and why they are so easy to apply.

So, let’s take the Nike logo. It’s mostly lyrics and a snap, right? Well what if you wanted the wall color to show through where the letters weren’t?

Some may think that we would print the decal on clear vinyl. That would make sense, right? The wall color would show through and it would be easy to apply.

But, in all honesty, do you think it would look professional? With some light, you know you could see where the transparent tape ends and that would look, well … sticky.

So the only option would be to die-cut each letter, right?

That wouldn’t be too difficult for our logo, especially if the wall decal was very large, for a lobby or conference room.

But what if the letters were smaller? Or what if we wanted to include the smaller “Stick to Your Style” text on the decal? That text is a script and much smaller and thinner than the letters in our logo.

That’s where a three-layer mask comes in. Is that how it works.

Production

Therefore, the vinyl is printed and cut, or die cut from a sheet of solid color vinyl. It comes out of the machine still being held together by the backing because the blades are set to cut only the vinyl and not through the paper backing.

Then it’s time to “weed” the vinyl. Weeding is when someone takes a pliers or a pointed pick tool and pulls out every piece that is not needed. So in our logo example, we would have to remove everything around the logo, including the inside of the “e”.

So the only part left on the paper backing would be the logo.

So how do we get that backing paper logo on our wall? This is where the third layer comes in.

Next, we take clear transfer tape and apply it over the entire decal. (It is important to know what the decal will be applied to so that the correct transfer tape will be used.)

In our case, we now ship the custom wall decal to our customer.

Request

And all our customer needs to do to put the decal on their wall is just peel off the paper backing.

Once the backing paper is removed, the sticky side of the decal is exposed. The logo or decal is held together by the clear transfer tape and can be easily applied as a decal.

Once the decal has been attached to the wall, the customer simply grabs one corner of the transfer tape and slowly pulls it at a 90 degree angle. As if by magic, the decal remains on the wall and the clear transfer paper turns to trash.

And there you have it: a three-layer mask.