Always wanted a stained glass window? Intimidated by cutting glass and fingers, applying hot leading and toasted fingers?
Translucent vinyl to the rescue! With almost 60 translucent colors available from Oracal Mfg. (my vinyl of choice) the options are limited only by your imagination.
Translucent vinyl can be applied to any glass, and most plastic surfaces. Picture the morning sunlight filtering through your “stained glass” skylight as you take your shower. Why not have a rainbow of color next to your tub instead of those heavy glass blocks that were popular for awhile? Privacy and beauty. No view or privacy from your bedroom windows – translucent to the rescue.
Pop over to the library and look up stained glass pattern books or look at pictures of old churches for inspiration. Make a copy of your favorite and take it to you local sign shop. Expect to pay a bit for this product because of the work involved but you will find it to be less expensive than the real thing.
Here’s another selling point – although the outdoor durability is 7 years and indoors probably almost double that, when you get tired of it, just grab a razor blade knife and scrape it off.

Have you heard your sign company or a business friend talk about “coro” or “coroplast”?  Well, here’s the low down. Like every business, sign makers have their own language and coro is a prime example. It’s actually an abbreviated word for corrugated plastic.

Uh, huh, so what does that mean? Corrugated plastic signs are an inexpensive sign substrate (oh, oh, another unfamiliar word – just means the stuff you put your lettering on). Think corrugated cardboard, only waterproof. Corrugated plastic signs  are easy to cut, hold up well indoors and outdoors, have a nice smooth surface for vinyl lettering, and install with a simple, inexpensive,  metal wire step stake. They are also light weight, as are the stakes – no pounding posts in the ground or trying to nail a sign up.

Corrugated plastic signs come in lots of colors including white, black, yellow, several shades of blue, red, orange, etc. They range in size from about as small as you can ask to 4′ x 8′ sheets. Some brands also come 5′ x 10′ . The material ranges in thickness from 4 mm to 10 mm. The 4 mm is pretty standard.

Of course, corrugated signs have a couple of drawbacks. They are pretty sturdy and self-supporting in smaller sizes such as 24″ x 18″ but much larger than that and they would have to be mounted on a wall or have some sort of backer in place. When you get to larger sizes, there are other materials much more suitable – but more about that later.

Another drawback, at least around here, is that people tend to steal them, strip off the vinyl and use them as garage sale signs.  It’s kind of sad, when you consider most any sign company can make folks their own garage sale signs at very reasonable cost and they can use them year after year with no guilt. My gosh, if I was ever going to consider stealing something it would have to be a whole lot more expensive than a corrugated sign, for goodness sake!

The final drawback is that the 4 mm signs are not totally opaque. When the sun shines on them at a certain angle, you can kind of see a shadow of the text on the other side. It’s not a big deal and the cost and ease of use of these signs make them an ideal choice. There are so many uses, from garage sale signs, special sales, service companies who want to distribute lots of signs, companies just starting out, folks with puppies or kitties for sale to baby sitting services, that it would take pages and pages to write them all down. One of my real estate agent customers uses them for their sign riders so they can add interesting information about the particular property. Another agency uses them with pins on top of their regular signs to display a website that tells all about the property for sale. My barn manager uses them all over the place – reminders to clean up the wash stalls, office signs, labeling for the recycling containers and the Lost & Found. I’ve had lots of fun creating cute signs for her with funny horses on them and such. I’ve also done stall signs for Pony Club kids when they go to rallies and they love the personalization.

I’ve also had several requests for large sheets of corrugated plastic to use around hamster cages. There must be plans out there on the net for this though I haven’t looked them up. With cats, dogs and horses, I have enough pets. I guess the material would be ideal for this use as long as the critter can’t chew on it. It’s easy enough to wash it off and it doesn’t hold odors. If anyone out there has the plans for this sort of thing, pass along the link and I’ll let folks who ask me know about it. I’d bet my mom would have appreciated just such a thing when she had parakeets who tended to be somewhat overzealous with their bird seed.

For most vinyl sign jobs, you have the choice between cast and calendered vinyl. Here’s a brief overview of what those terms mean and a few hints on which to choose for your specific application.

Cast vinyl is vinyl sheeting formed by spreading molten vinyl on a carrier sheet and then baking it at a high temperature to remove the solvents and fuse the remaining material into a film. Cast film is usually thinner and more expensive than calendered vinyl. It also offers a longer usable lifetime and is also usually shinier and has a richer looking finish. Lifespans for cast vinyl range from 5 to 7 and sometimes even ten years – depending on the brand and color. They are also less likely to shrink.

Calendered vinyl sheeting is squeezed between a series of heated rollers to achieve a small-enough thickness for cutting with a plotter. Calendered film is generally thicker and less expensive than cast vinyl and has a shorter usable life when exposed to light. The average lifespan of Calendered vinyl is 1-3 years but, even the best calendered product tends to fade and shrink faster than cast.

Calendered vinyl is best used for short-term signs mounted on corrugated plastic, such as garage sale signs, temporary banners and the like.

You just can’t get really nice results with calendered vinyl on long-term signage such as vehicles, magnets, banners that will be used more than once and most other signage.

Here at Tightwad Signs we use cast vinyl almost exclusively. Turning out a product we can be proud of is much more important to us than increasing profits at the expense of unhappy customers. Cast vinyl cuts and weeds easier and more cleanly (no jagged edges to letters or artwork) and applies more smoothly, eliminating wrinkling and undue bubbles. With proper handling and careful installation, you can’t go wrong with cast vinyl.

Next time you’re stuck in traffic, think of how many advertising impressions you may have missed without having vehicle magnets or lettering. Let your message work for you, even when your car or truck is parked.

Not all vinyl is created the same.  If you want high quality, durable vinyl work, be sure to work with your sign company to match the calibre of vinyl to the needs of the job. For outdoor applications, go with a gauge that is much less susceptible to warping in sunlight and temperature changes.