I’ve been dying to get some new artwork on my car for quite a while now but just haven’t had the time to work on it. I wanted to start off with something easy and inexpensive like a hood wrap so I began laying out my design on Illustrator.
Once I was happy with the design I printed it out on our HP Latex 560, laminated the design on our Kala Mistral, and cut out the tentacle pieces I needed on our Graphtec cutter.
The most difficult part was trying to clean up the old wrap I had without destroying my car. This was the biggest task that I had to deal with since I’ve had stickers on my car for over a decade and the adhesive just melded with my car.
Custom Art Hood Wrap
Once i had the hood to my liking I laid out the design and began wrapping it. I was really happy with the outcome and I get a lot of people looking at me weird which I’ve grown to enjoy.
When designing it I took a lot inspiration from H.R. Giger and mixed it in with some of my own illustration style. For some reason I’ve been really into tentacles lately so I’ve been drawing a lot of them. The Eye in the center is a drawing I did a long time ago for PoisonApple.com that worked its way into some other patterns I was sketching. I felt like the hood needed a centerpiece to tie it in together. I also thought it would be cool to have some tentacles look like they creeping out under the lights. Maybe it was a little too Stranger Things-y but I like it 🙂 Ohh, and it kind of reminded me of Hermaeus Mora from the Skyrim quest that I had just completed.
You’ll be able to see another weird drawing of a Dungeons and Dragons Beholder I turned into a shirt in a later blog.
Thanks for reading! If you’re looking to get a hood wrap like this please call us and we can get you a quote!
There are so many options when it comes to Large Format Printers that we decided to get some professional help from some of friends in the print business. We talked to the print gurus at Vomela West and they suggested with our budget and business size that we get the HP Latex 560.
We also talked to Marty, the owner of High Res Imaging, and he said we should use a company called Denco Sales to purchase the equipment. We set an appointment with them and we were off!
Alex and I getting a demo of the HP Latex 560 in action
There were also a few things we picked up like the Graphtec FC8600 which is a vinyl rollfeed cutter and a Kala laminator for giving our vinyl some added protection for exterior applications.
Kala Mistral 1650-65 Laminator
We are very excited to get the shop up and running!
Alex signing over a bunch of money to get our business started!
The front entrance to our new business venture!
When we decided to go all in on this print shop we were excited and wanted to hit the ground running, but the second our feet touched the floor we ran into trouble. We didn’t know this at the time, but many commercial space owners did not want any businesses that dealt with cars because of the fear of oil leaks and how it would affect the resale value of their property when they did chemical testing. We explained that we would only be wrapping cars in vinyl and not actually working on cars but the answer was still, “NO.”
A view of the office area, work area, and conference room.
This lead to a month of searching for commercial property and being turned down. Our realtor found a gem of a spot in Orange, CA but the problem was, Alex was up in Salinas working on a Lowes installation project and couldn’t come down to see it. Alex’s dad and I ended up taking a look at the place and it was perfect. It had great street visibility, it was close to the freeways, and had a perfect work area to do our printing and wrapping. We sent a proposal the very same day.
It took a couple weeks because of the holidays but we ended up signing the lease and getting the spot! We’re pretty revved up and ready to go now that we’ve finally found our shop and looking forward to printing some awesome graphics!
Alex signing the lease at the realtor office.
Oh, and the space we got is owned by Del Worsham, a famous NHRA funny car driver! Another awesome thing is that his personal bowling alley is right above our shop.
The adventure begins!
Siteline Graphics
1800 N. Glassell St.
Orange, CA 92865
