My husband wanted an Army Corp of Engineers castle on his truck, but subtle. So I ordered some matt black outdoor vinyl, converted the public domain svg (scalable vector graphic) file to a Cricut cut file, and used my Cricut cutter to cut the sticky vinyl.

To transfer the cut image to a permanent location you need to use transfer tape. Take time to line up the image with the guidelines on the transfer tape. I had to take a couple tries on this, which means I had to cut and weed (take out all the vinyl I didn’t want) twice. Please learn from my error! And when lining up the image in the final location, soapy water doesn’t work with intricately cut out vinyl, so go slow and use your guidelines. (By the way, soapy water works great for solid vinyl. It allows some wiggle room to set the design, then you squeegee out the water and the vinyl will stick. The soapy water with this cut out just nestled cozy in the openings and wouldn’t go away.) You know what? If you do intend to do this, just cut two or three images to start with, or maybe tape an image to the inside of the window so you have more guides. Hindsight is 20/20.

The result was awesome. Really hard to photograph because the window is reflective and the castle is not, but very cool to walk up to the truck and see the castle because of the difference in sheen.