Read the article "Breaking the Rules: Pushing the Limits with Ceramic Decals" that I wrote for the March/April 2008 issue of Pottery Making Illustrated Magazine.

View a video of my decal application that was featured on ceramicartsdaily.org.

CERAMIC DECAL RESOURCES

Printer Models/Inks that produce ceramic quality decals:

YOU MUST USE A LASER PRINTER. Not Kinkos (unless they have an old HP laser printer), not an inkjet printer.

HP LaserJet 1022 -- this is what I use, the others listed here are recommendations from other ceramic artists who do decal work.
HP laserjet 4L
HP laserjet 5L
HP P1005 laserjet
HP P1006 laserjet

Printers that accept HP LaserJet print cartridge 12A

Here is the HP site for MSDS sheets. You want cartridges that have at least 30% Iron in the toner.

Decal Paper:

It works. The website says it doesn't, but it does:
www.decalpaper.com

www.beldecal.com

Commercial Decal sources:
www.ebay.com
https://secure.harbon.com/cgi-bin/harbon/index.html
www.wisescreenprint.com/
www.artdecalcorp.com
www.timrg.com/indecal/
www.olympiadecals.com
www.fthstudio.com/
www.instardecals.com
www.held.co.uk
www.skolldecal.com
www.ceramicdecalprinting.com/index.htm

Firing Temps:
In my experience most laser transfer decals fire permanently onto pre-glazed ware at cone 04 when using glazes that mature at cone 6 and higher.
Most glazes that mature at cone 04 will accept laser decals fired to cone 06.
Most commercial decals, decals from easyceramicdecal.com, and most chinapaints and lusters fire to maturity between cone 015 and 017.

Designing Laser Decals:

Line drawings at high resolution (300 dpi) in black and white with high contrast work best. Great sources for images are clipart files, sharpie marker drawings, and google image searches.

Other good tools:

Mudtools.com  -- the red ribs make great squeegees
Amaco.com – versa color china paints are great for silk screening or painting over glaze
Sponges from Trader Joe’s grocery store.

Hints:
Sometimes regular water can leave a silhouette mark around decals. In this case, buy distilled water from the store to use in applying the decals.

I have discovered that with certain glazes/clay bodies will dunt/crack after being fired several times. I’m still figuring out what causes this, and how to avoid it. However, some things that have worked include slowing the firing process down when doing the decal firing, doing a slower cooling process, reformulating glazes. I haven’t found any fantastic resources for this, but this is definitely something to be careful of.

Good Books:
Image Transfer on Clay – By Paul Andrew Wandless
Ceramics and Print – By Paul Scott

Good Websites

Linda Arbuckle

Good Resources for Copyright Law and Fair Use explanation
www.tfaoi.com/articles/andres/aa6.htm
www.umuc.edu/library/copy.shtml