OK I have been thinking about painting the center console black like many others here on the forum and just like them I wanted to change the silver switches and ***** to black also. Well after searching the forum for the part # for that black switches and the trouble and expense others have had, I just decided maybe the silver was not all that bad. But I just did a complete stereo upgrade and the head unit is black and makes the silver console stick out worse.
Well I am sitting in the mall watching my girlfriend get her nails done and the girl next to her is getting little designs on her nails. So I watching and the designs are little clear stickers with the design on them and then clear coated over. So now I am thinking hey when I paint the console parts I can just paint the switches and ***** to and just do what the girl was doing to her nails. So I got home and did a search on the net and found out there tons on companies sell the clear stickers. You simple get a photo or design and print it out on your jet ink printer. So I take my camera and take a couple of pics of the controls and download them onto my computer. Then I went into Microsoft Paint and invert the colors and now the black design is know white.
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Know the next problem is getting the right sizes. So I thinking the best way to do this is to pull the switch and put it on a scanner so the sizes are exact, print it out on clear sticker paper and then trim it to the right size of the switches using a drafting template. Well I not ready to start tearing the console apart and trying my idea out. But I thought I might share it with the forum. And if somebody has a spare switch laying around or is getting ready to paint their console they might want to try it out and see if it will work.


Let me know what you think
Sive

 

Next time your gf goes to the parlor, take them with you and get them done there, a sparkly pattern would look kind of neat.
Do not use acetone to remove them though.

 

I've had similar thoughts, but if you look at your controls, you will there there are some other issues to work around. Some of them have a small dot that lights up - so you'd need to somehow mask that off when painting those controls (or paint over it an live without the little lighted dot). On the temp controls, the center dot is lighted, then red dots for warm and blue for cool - again, more masking, or you'd need to paint the dots back in, or put stickers in them.