YELLOW BELLE AVIATION
My buddy from college is a pilot who owns a Kitfox Series 6 airplane, so-named for its color (Yellow) and in memory of his mother (Belle), hence “Yellow Belle”. Ironically, Belle hated the idea of flying in small airplanes.
Late last month, we flew the Yellow Belle 15 hours (1400 miles) from Phoenix, Arizona to Oshkosh, Wisconsin for the annual Oshkosh airshow. We were plane-camping at the airshow when this contest was announced. Seeing the silhouetted plane in the early morning, an idea for a sign was born. I had plenty of time to think about it during the long flight home. I made two signs – one for my buddy’s hangar and one for his workshop/man cave.
Landing in Oshkosh
DESIGN NOTES
I imported a photo of the plane as a background and carefully traced it with the polyline and curve tools, tweaking the design until it was a good likeness of the real thing. This was by far the hardest part of the project.
The name on the plane uses the “Pacifico” font, so I used the same font for “Yellow Belle” on the sign. I used Courier Bold Oblique for “AVIATION” because it leans to the right and seems to convey a sense of forward motion.
CONSTRUCTION NOTES
The signs are made from ½” Baltic Birch Plywood, 30”x24”. After sanding, I sprayed the blanks with a coat of shellac for two reasons: 1) it seals the wood and prevents paint from bleeding under the mask and 2) it allows the mask to be removed without peeling up wood fibers.
The boards were then masked with (cheap) Duck brand adhesive shelf paper and squeegeed down tight with a roller.
Spray the blank with Shellac…
Mask with Duck brand shelf paper…
Zero on the center and cut “Yellow Belle Aviation”…
Move the board (too tall for my XL to cut in one pass), re-zero and cut the plane…
Mask the black parts…
Spray a base coat of white (helps the yellow paint cover better)…
Spray the yellow…
Mask the yellow and spray the black…
Peel off the mask. This is the fun part!
Sign
#1. Pinstripes, windows and “N” number are hand-painted.
Sign
#2 (no paint on the windows for a different look)
The corners were rounded with a disc sander. 2 coats of Polycrylic spray on both sides. Personalize the back and add hardware…
Yellow Belle Aviation.c2d (2.1 MB)