Styrene buildings with wallpaper sides


F

firetacoma

Member
I was looking around on shelflayouts.com and saw that the author there makes styrene buildings and then paper them with printed wallpaper... curious how that works?

What kind of paper are these printed on? How are they glued on?
 
Can you give me an exact link to the structure you're asking about? I don't really understand your question.
 
My best guess would be cardstock with either a spray adhesive or a rubber cement brushed on the surface. Roll it out with a wall paper roller to remove any bubbles. Actually a pretty neat idea for a very realistic look.
 
It says the core is styrene so spray adhesive would be my guess. As Wastre said, you'll need a narrow wallpaper roller to get rd of the air bubbles. I don't know why Lance would have made the structure first and then put on the photo montage but it would have been a lot easier with the building sides flat.
 
Lance discuss this building at the Great Lakes Model Railroad Symposium in South Bend IN earlier this year. He used a spray adhesive to glue the photos to the building. A small roller was used to smooth out any air bubbles.

It was also mentioned that most spray adhesives break down over time, so there was some concern that the photos may peal off after a couple of years. I hope not, as Lance has done some very nice buildings using this technique.

I've used a glue stick to attach backdrop photos. You have to be careful not to use a glue that will make the paper moist, as the inks may bleed or run.
 
firetacoma said:
Thanks Fred! Do you know if it was just normal photo paper that these are printed on.
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I can't remember what kind of paper he used, sorry. He talked about using textured paper to simulate things like stucco, but I'm not sure on this building.

I would use a matte photo paper.
 
CP9302 said:
It was also mentioned that most spray adhesives break down over time, so there was some concern that the photos may peal off after a couple of years.
Click to expand...

He has cause for concern. I used the 3M #77 spray adhesive for my backdrop and, after two years in the Alabama humidity, bubbles have developed. I've sliced a few with a razor blade and then used contact cement to stick them back down. Others were right over clouds and actually made the clouds look more 3-D so I left those. I think the problem is that spray adhesive is almost impossible to get smoothly coated on a surface so there are low and high spots that allow air to work its way under the paper. If I was doing a smaller surface like that building, I'd use contact cement and brush it on as evenly as possible. I suspect that would give longer lasting results.
 
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