How to Make Decals for Your Vintage Furniture

From the 1940s through the 1960s, decals were pretty standard on children's nursery items. These tiny pieces of whimsical art were found on everything from safety pin containers to high chairs, cribs, headboards, and more. Most nursery furniture items had baby animals, such as bunnies, chicks, or puppies. Table and chair sets were decorated a little more festively, with balloons or clowns, Disney characters or even cowboys.

When we restored a vintage furniture set for our daughter, we decided to replicate some of these period decals. It's a simple project and one that can be done in a few hours.

A word of caution: exchanging existing decals with modern replicas on a period piece will lower the value. You should only consider adding decals on furniture items that are being refinished.

Where to find vintage prints

The toughest part of the project is finding vintage prints that will work. Dover publications offer a wide range of clip art books that are full of copyright free color artwork. Dover books cover a wide range of topics, and run anywhere from $5 for a basic book to $19.95 for a color book with CD-rom. Their on-line site even offers free samples.

If the decals are just for personal use, check out your local thrift store. These stores are filled with old children's books, magazines, and nursery room artwork that are perfect for this project. Once the artwork has been assembled, the next step is turning them into decals.

Making the decals

To make decals, you'll need access to both a scanner and a laser jet printer that prints in color. Laser jet printers fuse the ink directly to the paper, and are basically color permanent. Ink jet printers merely lay the ink on the surface which will smear when wet. If you have a scanner and a laser jet printer at home, you are 95% of the way there! Scan your image, crop it down to size, and print it on quality laser paper. But if you don't, merely take your print to your local copy and print shop. For a few dollars, they can make a color copy of your image in any size.