229 CRAFTY CUTS...

Today was a big day in our trip preparation as we took the plunge and fitted the magnetic stickers to the car. This involved a lot more measuring, template-making, and cutting than I was expecting. Still, I'm giddy to report that the results are brilliant!

The smaller, individual stickers didn't need any work; they are just thrown on the bonnet, boot and sides, so they didn't need any fettling, just a bit of positioning, standing back to see how they looked and then minor tweaking. Done.

The tricky parts were the small stripe on the back, the big stripe on the roof and the long stripes across the sides.

The stripe on the back covered the Abarth badge, so we needed to cut a badge-shaped hole in the material. This involved making 6 or 7 templates and going at the strip with a craft knife. The results are, well, if I'm being kind, shonky. But that is okay; it aligns with our 'just please squint' ethos.

Fitting the side stripes was a faff because the magnets were so sticky, making it really difficult to make small tweaks. Each change meant removing the entire piece and reapplying it over and over.

Eventually, we stumbled across the perfect position and stood back to admire our work. It looked really good, to be honest.

Once both sides were fitted, Lisa went to town with the craft knife and cut them where they crossed the gap between the door and the other panels. The last thing was to trim the small piece on the front panel. This took longer than any other work we did on the car! It was so difficult to get it to look right. It was shaped and trimmed about 10 times before we were happy with the result.

The last thing to do was cut the hole for the aerial in the roof sticker, which Lisa nailed on the first go. We found that although the car is small, it is just tall enough to make it a faff to fit the roof stripe, but I'm sure we will survive.

And that was that, all the stickers were on, and I'll be honest, I'm chuffed with the result. We need to fettle the stripe on the front, but otherwise we are there. Our neighbours, Paul and Linda, were also impressed with the result and suggested we should keep the graphics on permanently - an opinion echoed by a few people I sent the image to.

So we are there with the car now, I think. Just need to pour in the engine flush the next time I fill up, and we are as rally-ready as we will ever be. It is getting scarily real now!