If you can carefully and accurately paint a banner one inch wide and two inches tall, then this article is not for you.
If you’re one of the rest of us… read on.
First, decide how difficult detail work is for you. If you are comfortable painting or tracing the same design at three inches by six inches, you have more work ahead of you, but you’ll spend less money. If you feel that you have no artistic talent at all, fear not- there is a solution!
Materials:
CLEAR or lightly opaque shrink plastic (need not be shrink dinks brand and may allow for inkjet printing)
Water-based acrylic paint or colored pencils
200-300 grit sand paper
Assorted sprues and basing materials
Heat source
Brown paper or vellum
A design

Cost: Between six and fifteen dollars for up to 36 banners

Time: Between twenty minutes and three hours based on shrink plastic and quality of detail, paint drying time, etc
Look through internet databases and codices to find the banner or banners that interest you.


We scanned a page in the Dark Angels Codex.


Save the scan, then import into editing software.
Since we have a pc, we used Paint.


Select the banner or banners you want and trim/cut them.
Here is the page view that we finally used for sizing:


If you have bought inkjet specific shrink plastic (at least $10 not more than $15 for six to eight sheets) you need only to fit as many banners as possible onto the page and print on the plastic, skipping ahead to the shrinking instructions. Otherwise, print on basic white copy paper.
The shrink plastic that we used usually shrinks to 1/3 original size when placed in an oven at 300 degrees F, but may shrink to half size if using a blow-dryer or rubber stamp embossing heat gun.


We want our banners to be about one inch wide.

TO PAINT:
Lay the transparent shrink plastic over the design. Carefully paint what you see. Games Workshop/ Citadel paints are water based and can be used directly on the plastic and then placed in your oven (for about three minutes) without catching fire or creating toxic fumes. You will probably want to paint one color at a time. You can always add coats or mixed-media details before shrinking to achieve the level of detail you desire.



COLORED PENCILS ONLY:
Begin by carefully sanding the surfaces of both sides of the plastic. If the plastic does not show scratch marks, the pencil will not color!
Place the plastic over the banner, tracing and coloring details first. Outline areas of bold color and backgrounds. Turn the plastic over and color in the backgrounds behind the details you have already drawn.




MIXED MEDIA:
Sand only one side of the shrink plastic. Color the entire image with pencil. Turn the plastic over and paint the other side a light color if the banner has light colors on it, or a dark color if there’s a lot of dark colors on the banner. After the paint has dried, turn back over and add lettering and outlines with a zero paintbrush or a permanent marker.



Cut out your banner, leaving a slight edge of clear plastic. Lay the banners on a sheet of brown paper or vellum that’s been placed on a cookie sheet.
Cover with another sheet of paper and bake at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for two to three minutes- watch the plastic as it bakes. Once it has shrunk and is tightly curled, remove the cookie sheet!
Quickly use a tile, spatula, rolling pin, or plate to flatten any banner you wish to have without furls. Shrink plastic may be manipulated while hot to allow you to add furls with modeling tools if this is the effect you desire. It takes practice, works best after using a crafting heat gun, and can crack the banner, so think carefully about the time you wish to invest. You may want to practice on blank or single-color samples of plastic.


If the back is not black or some other solid color, coat it now.
Time to mount the banner!
Some kits have standard bearers and/or flagpoles that are part of the assembly. If you need to make your own, turn to sprues!
File down two pieces that are appropriate lengths. We added some Dark Angel bits. We used the pop cap of a milk bottle as a base, then primed the base, coated it in white glue, and stuck the whole thing into a tray of sand.