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Can anyone share words of wisdom, and what do you prefer? Cause right now I'm repulsed by decals/stickers for ultramarine shoulder pads to be specific.

Having hard time even sticking the decals to the shoulder without having air tunnels and not looking awful and glossy :( my second painted marine ruined by decal, lol.

So what should I do..? All this is making me considering painting simple markings, like for sergeant white outline and red inside the symbol for ultras, instead of something fancy like red skull in the middle and ultra mark.

Here man read the guide that is near the bottom by Winterdyne, it really helped me out alot.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/434021.page

I much prefer freehanding my icons even though they don't always look as sharp as decals.
Try this here for breaking down the Ultramarine symbol: http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/2010/12/basics-science-fiction-model.html

I use a two tiered approach; I use a decal softener (name brand escapes me right now, but should be readily available at hobby stores) which gets rid of the "air tunnels", bubbles, etc. I then paint over the decal when set up. This gives them a painted on look, and is ideal for people like me who suck at free handing.

MicroSet and MicroSol are your new best friends. Paint area where decal is supposed to go with MicroSet. Apply decal on top. Brush MicroSol over top until the decal conforms to the shoulder pads.

These two products make decal application super easy, and almost fun to do.

Decals can look great with significantly less effort than a freehanded design, provided you have the right tools (Microsol/Microset or an all-in-one decal softening/setting solution, plus gloss varnish) and readily available decals. It may take a few applications of the solvent, but most of the time it takes is drying - there's really not that much skill or effort needed. Also, decals will always look glossy - expect to apply matte varnish over the top the dull that shine down. Since many, if not most, gamers varnish their models after completion, anyway, it's not usually considered much of an issue.

I don't plan to use them on my Space Marines, personally, because I'd have to get custom sheets printed (haven't seen any for my chapter). The design is also a bit too intricate to attempt freehanding at the shoulder pad scale, so I plan to create a small icon to replicate via push-mold, so I have a 3-D design to simplify painting.

Thanks for all the help, guys!

I'm gonna give a freehand symbol a shot, always been good at drawing symbols so I'm curious how it'll turn out.
And reason why I'm doing this is because my store that sells Warhammer stuff has no decal setting solution whatsoever, which means I have to order over ebay. And the other is because I'm lacking few decals to fit my 15 man tact squad.

Wish me luck x.x

Model railway suppliers or (traditional scale model / plastic kit) model shops usually have some sort of decal solution.

Decals give consistency; they're not a 'short cut', nor an easy option, and it's very wrong to assume they are. Done properly, they can be sharper looking than freehand. Done wrong, much, much worse.

The main piece of advice I can give is to be patient. Even when using microsol it can take a while to get things working. On the BA squad below, it took about 3 or 4 HOURS work to get the shoulder pad chapter symbol decals to conform properly. Conversely it took less than 25 minutes to freehand all the skulls on the kneepads.