Customizing your snowboard with stickers is a fantastic way to express your personality and make your gear stand out on the slopes. Stickers can look awesome on snowboards, or they can look awful, so it's important to get the placement and type right.
Choosing the Right Stickers
When it comes to stickers for your snowboard, die-cut stickers are often the best choice as they tend to last the longest. Consider popular brands and designs to add a touch of style to your board. Backcountry.com and NS stickers are pretty popular.
Placement Ideas
Here are some ideas for sticker placement to get you started:
- Nose and Tail: The nose and tail of the snowboard are popular spots for larger stickers or a cluster of smaller ones.
- Edges: Placing stickers along the edges of the board can create a visually appealing border.
- Between Bindings: The area between the bindings is a great canvas for showcasing your favorite brands or designs.
Kind of a weird one here, but I really like customizing my skis with stickers. One tradition I have is to add bird stickers to the backs of my skis, after a childhood pair of skis I had with little eagles on the back of them.
Customize Your Ski or Snowboard with Custom Stickers – Easy Tutorial
Application Techniques
Applying stickers correctly is essential to ensure they adhere well and last long. Here are some tips:
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- Clean the Surface: Before applying any stickers, make sure the surface of your snowboard is clean and dry.
- Plan Your Layout: Arrange the stickers on the board before sticking them to ensure you like the overall look.
- Apply Carefully: Peel off the sticker backing and carefully apply the sticker to the board, smoothing out any air bubbles as you go.
Protecting Your Stickers
To protect your stickers from the elements and ensure they last as long as possible, consider these options:
- Polyurethane Sealants: There are Polyurethane sealants that people use to waterproof the stickers that they use to customize Tumblers and other drinks for the washing machine. These sealants get lightly painted on and around the sticker to seal the edges and help waterproof it.
- Epoxy Coating: I've read on other forums such as Newschoolers and Teton Gravity Research, the recommendation to paint a thin layer of some kind of epoxy over the surface, but there are so many different kinds of epoxies, and I'm not sure which one will work for this application. I would think it would need to be flexible to flex with the ski and not just crack. No one gave specific recommendations, but I've seen several different types recommended by ski techs for ski repair. Anyone have any recommendations or experience with using epoxy on the surface of the ski topsheet?
- Waterproof Adhesive: which is a polyurethane adhesive used by crafters to glue rhinestones and other things to the surface of all sorts of waterproof things such as tumblers and phones, and people give it very good reviews for this application. I was thinking I could use a paintbrush to paint around the outside edge of the sticker to give it an extra waterproofing seal, and possibly paint over its surface for a clear protective coat.
Additional Tips
- Let me know if anyone has done something like this before or has experience with various sealants, crafty stuff, and epoxies, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
- I also plan on calling my ski manufacturer, Moment Skis, tomorrow, to see if they have any suggestions based on their experience with the top sheet of their skis, which is some kind of textured nylon that is very durable, but I don't know how well stickers will stick to it.
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