While waiting on the Head to cure... I decided I wanted to do a little something extra for the background of the cabinet - approx where the Klingon ship would have been. I debated internally in my head of I wanted to go this far... in the end deciding "it's my machine; make it yours!".

I did some looking around on google images for Hubble space telescope pictures when I came across this picture of the M82 Galaxy:


Remember to Click the image to get higher rez shots you can zoom in on

Now that I had the picture... it was time to figure out how to get in on the cabinet. I had some White backed Water slide decal paper for my color laserjet; so I figured I'd give it a shot. Some water slide work... some Airbrush work... and we are left with two similar yet uniquely different renditions of the M82 galaxy on either side of the cabinet:




I coated the airbrush/decal work with some Matte clear spray paint while we waited on the head to cure.

I knew I wanted to do something different with the background black... that was adding holographic gold and silver flake to the topcoat before I stencil. So I did some google searching and ended up purchasing some gold and silver flake from PaintWithPearl.com. The idea was I wanted to have a star field over the black. Nothing really special about this webstore; other than they seem to be the most competitive w/ regards to color selection as well as price/ounce. 

I mixed about 1/8 a tsp of silver and 1/8 tsp of gold into the polyacrylic clearcoat I was going to spray over the black stain to seal it. With my Harbor Freight spray gun I sprayed the cabinet and head. 




In retrospect; the metal flake at 0.004 inch was just too small... looks more like star dust; not a starry night. Ideally; I'd have gotten several sizes and mixed them for a more random look. Here's a close up showing the gold/silver flakes:


Here's an attempt to capture the holographic nature of the flakes in the sunlight:


If I had it to do over... I'd proably have used less "dust"... and gotten some larger flakes to try and break up the eye candy... I may still try to apply some bigger flake; but honestly... I don't want to spend more time / money on the internet. Maybe I'll feel differently tomorrow.

In general; I'm pleased with the result... just need to put the finishing touches on the stencil designs so I can start that process.