The recent
Macintosh SE I received had an Apple logo with scratches on it.
I had tried numerous things in the past including hand painting one using acrylic, but none came out the way I wanted. This time around, I decided to try a color water slide decal instead.
Step one was to remove the old Apple badge and sand away the scratches. I then primed it in white. There's two pictured below as I was also working with a damaged one from a IIci.
I then used a photo inkjet printer to print a rainbow colored decal. It took some time to get this right as I don't have a good understanding of color profiles and after spending an hour or so trying to calibrate my monitor and printer, I gave up and just tweaked the colors until the printed result matched what I wanted.
The first two rows above were a failed attempt at color matching. The last two rows on this sheet I was satisfied with. Note that I put 3 coats of acrylic gloss clear on top of the decal to ensure the ink didn't wash away in water during the transfer step. Next step after that was to transfer the decal onto the badges. I used painters tape to hold the badges in place.
I used a hair dryer to heat up the badges which allowed the decals to dry and kinda form onto the edges of the badge. After cooling, I used an xacto knife to cut away the left overs.
Yes, the cutting isn't exact but I didn't want to get super close to the badge as it might tear off the decal from the badge itself. When mounting, I knew I could tuck away the remaining decal edges.
And the final result back onto the same Macintosh SE from where it came.
I cleaned up the edges a bit more after taking the above picture but as of right now, it looks really clean. Colors are pretty close. Unfortunately, sharing the decal picture isn't going to help anyone as it was colored to match the output of my Canon photo printer.