The More I Do, the Less I Create

This is a real Les Paul headstock:

I wanted something similar, albeit with a flippant twist:

But how to put it on the guitar's headstock?

I decided to print the decal with only black and clear, and use gold paint underneath it. That way the logo would be gold.

Here's what I did: I bought gold paint and put it on the headstock where the logo went. Then I applied the logo over it.

The final product was okay, but... justokay. Which is why I sanded it off and started over again.

The second time, I used a much larger decal so that I could make sure to have enough gold under the letters.

Also, for the second attempt I used gold paint pen. It went on smoother and thinner.

I used pins to make small indentations at all the outside corners of the lettering, so that I had a much better chance of getting all the letters backed with gold. Ahhhh, that's much better.

Somehow, the lettering came out a little thinner than the first one too, which I actually like. So then, all I had to do was start building up lacquer, and pretty soon, the lines from the decal disappeared!