Badge Redeux, Part 1

Taking another pass at badges.  I really lucked out on having generous and artistic friends!  This is the badge for bike #3, which I'm calling the Racing Pug.  My friend L did the sketch based on some pug/goggle pictures that I scrounged and I did the text.

There are two main differences between this badge and the previous ones.  First, I'm using some purpose made transfer paper called Stick and Peel Blue.  

It works about the same way that the magazine solution does.  You print on it with a laser printer, iron it over onto a piece of metal, then dip acid.  I found that this worked best without pre-heating and at a higher setting on the iron (might just be the brand of toner). 

Supervision.

The other big difference was that I was etching stainless steel instead of copper or brass.  Stainless etches more slowly and leaves a lot of sediment (dusty grit, the leftover steel from the reaction), but it does work.  I tried brushing the sediment out of the lines with a sponge, but that seemed to lift the edge of the resist a bit, and lead to blurry lines... so I might have to live with a somewhat shallow etch.

That said, it turned out pretty well.  I'm going to have to figure out a good way to darken the lower area, or to darken the whole thing so that I can polish the surface back to brightness.  I'll finish it by cutting out the negative space above and below the badge so that it'll have some interesting outlines, then using a tube-block to bend it into the right shape.