'90 Jaguar XJ40 - Flake, Candy, Lace and Graffiti Paint :D

Wow man! This really is looking a bit special. When I saw the original flake on the full roof, I was unsure but when you showed the references and the BOOM! What you'd done to your own roof, I flippin' love it.

CFD

Thanks grizz

Next to do was to mask up the green panel and start taping out the panels for the lace.
You need to take your time here, mark an accurate centreline as a datum and look at the shapes you're making from many different angles.
Some cars will take a regular square or rectangle on the roof but others will need the shape to follow the lines of the car more.
The sides of the jag are fairly straight so first I laid out parallel lines to form the edges of the panels.
I tried quite a lot of variations with the angle of the ends of the panel and ended up with a compromise between it being square and following the angle of the windscreen and the rear window.
I found the easiest way to do the curved corners was to put some wide tape on diagonally and draw around something round then cut the tape along the line with a scalpel.
I wouldn't advise using a Stanley knife for this, it need to be a good sharp cut.
Lots of measuring then and use your centreline to mirror the panel on the other side.

I think what makes panels like this look much more finished and professional is to use shading and a pinstripe at the edge.
Here you can see I'm using 1-2" bits of 6mm tape to neatly mark out the pinstripe in 3mm vinyl tape



Once that's done the rest of the roof was masked up and it's time for the lace.
I got mine from Dunelm Mill, it's sold as net curtains in different drop lengths and you just pick the width you want cut off the roll.
They have a fairly good selection of designs and probably a good idea to do what I did and have a picture of the effect you're going for on your phone so as to reassure the shop assistant that you're not completely mental, only a bit crazy

When it comes to holding the lace down you want it fairly tight and making good contact with the roof but not pulled so it distorts. This was a bit tricky as whatever the lace is made from does not stick to masking tape at all. I've read of some people using hairspray or spray glue on the back but I didn't want to risk any residue in the paint.
In the end I taped it as best I could and used Blutac to hold some bits down as suggested in Seth's thread.

Again take your time here, the painting is just a quick dust, spend as long as needed to be happy with the pattern.
I tried to have the flowers placed nicely and flipped the lace over when doing the opposite panel so they were symmetrical.
Buy enought lace to do all you need in one go, I don't think you could reuse it.

Laying out the lace:



I partly chose the purple because didn't know how much paint I would need and was worried about running out but also thought it would look good.
Mixing colours meant I would have twice as much to work with.
Once I was happy with the lace I mixed dark blue with dark red to give the dark purple used for the lace pattern
One medium coat was shot over the area, trying to be as even as possible then the lace removed carefully, peeled up and away from the roof.





I was really pleased with how vividly the pattern turned out, nice and crisp and even.

I think the designs look much more finished when the silver is blended into the base colour so I shaded the edges with the dark purple the removed the pinstripe tape and went over the area with a mixture of lighter blue and ordinary red to give the lighter purple.



Next: Millions of stripes and the roof's done!!

Thanks carlosfandango adam73bgt and sava001006

I wanted the whole background of the roof to be made up of stripes of varying colours and shades.
I wish I had taken some more photos of this stage but it was getting really late and this was turning into the mother of all all nighters!

Basically after the lace panels were masked I selected at random an area around 4-6" wide that I wanted to be a certain colour, again a random width.
The only consideration I gave was not to have a bright green stripe going underneath the bright green centre panel but basically random.
With the extremities of the colour stripe masked in straight lines from the front of the car to the back (with the exception of the roof to A and C pillar transition - you need to use your eye and judgement here) the inside was filled or nearly filled with parallel runs of tapes of different widths, at random. I think I used 3mm, 6mm, 10mm maybe and 18mm can't remember.
Then with one colour I started to paint the stripe. The theory here is that as you build up the coats of candy paint the colour gets darker.
You shoot some colour, remove a stripe or two, shoot again and so on until that colour stripe is done. Some tape my be left on to leave a silver stripe.
You can hopefully see what I mean in these close ups.
Silver - no candy
Darker colours - either not masked or unmasked early
Lighter colours - unmasked last.







Following that routine the rest of the roof was finished. It took many hours and many beers but it was all finished in that session.
For a first go I'm more than happy with the result.
Here it is before clear coating:







I decided to add a bit more dimension by doing a black shadow around the sunroof panel.
This was done with ordinary black acrylic spray paint but sprayed straight from the can into my touch up gun so I had more control when applying it.

The roof was left for a couple of days to fully dry then was rubbed down all over with grey scotch brite to knock the edges off and give a key for the clear coat.
I used a fast drying hardener this time and it was much better.
Can't remember how many coats I did but a good 4 or 5 I think.
That left me with this gun finish which I'm happy with and don't have any plans at the minute to wet sand and buff it.











The rest of the car will be painted in the purple graffiti paint so shouldn't take long!

That looks fantastic!

Stunning, just stunning!

Utterly awesome!! ...may have already said that?!

Awesome work! I was sat here thinking, just needs whitewalls. Then read the next sentence lol.

Looks brilliant!

With the lines of the bonnet following on from the A pillars and the lines on the rear scuttle panel leading nicely into the bootlid, I wonder what it would look like with the flake stuff continued over those panels?...

The mpg sounds about right, mine only managed about 17mpg average over the whole time I had the car haha

Gott I'm himmel! That is amazing.

And now I want to learn to paint my own cars.