Pretty much confirming what has already been said: I went to an art store and asked for a couple of sheets of A4 rice paper. They looked at me and said you would be wanting the asian food market down the road.

At that point I went for plan B. Confessed that I was a mad kayak builder and apparently you could put graphics onto rice paper, epoxy over it and it mostly goes transparent. What I actually wanted was some rice paper-like stuff and some indian ink and a paint brush that I could trace a (namebrand flying guillemot) design on and try the technique out.

"OK then we can help you": They had heaps of different grades of artificial-rice paper like stuff (not unlike shoe box tissue) and I chose a thickness that I thought I could work with.

I then doddled off home and proceeded to really crease up one of my two sheets trying to force it through printers and photocopiers (even taping the paper to backing A4 plain paper did not help). I also had a scrap of plywood which I put a piece of test paper on that had penciled writing, brushed indian ink, biro, ink pen and permanent marker + a colour printed humpback whale direct from the printer on plain old white paper. I glassed over the test papers. The results: The artificial rice paper did indeed go invisible (where it was not over-written). The plain old paper with the humback whale was colour fast and ok. The biro reacted chemically and 'faded to grey'. The ink pen would be ok for signatures but most of all I liked the brushed indian ink - particularly because it gave a soft (slightly fuzzy if you will) edge. So I traced the outline of two guillemots with pencil, coloured them in with painted black (they have other colours) indian ink and eventually fibreglassed them permanently under my deck sheathing.

They have seen a bit of light with my kayaking adventures including being stored outside for at least a week of my christmas holidays and the artificial rice paper inked guillemots are holding up just fine.

I am too computer illiterate and lazy to attempt to post a picture myself. Fortunately for me, the talented Myrl Tanton has a picture of my artificial rice paper guillemots on his site under "here" at:

http://www.geocities.com/myrlin_us/kayak/kayak.html

Good Luck

Pete