What a tarpapel actually is
Tarpapel is tarpaulin plus papel — the same banner, printed on paper. Print shops charge for vinyl, a minimum size and a wait. Paper costs almost nothing, prints in minutes, and for a banner that hangs indoors for one afternoon it looks the same from two metres away.
The catch has always been that a home printer stops at A4 or short bond. This tool removes that: it cuts your design into sheet-sized pieces, prints them in order, and you tape them back together.
How many sheets you need
It depends on the banner size and how much edge your printer cannot reach. With the usual settings:
- 2 × 3 ft — about 15 sheets of A4
- 3 × 4 ft — about 25 sheets of A4
- 6 × 2 ft, the long streamer shape — about 28 sheets
- Chart paper size, 56 × 71 cm — about 9 sheets
Short bond, A4 or long bond
Short bond paper is 8.5 × 11 inches — pick Letter as the sheet size. Long bond is 8.5 × 14 inches, which is Legal. A4 is the slightly narrower, slightly taller sheet sold everywhere else. All three are in the sheet list, and the sheet count updates as soon as you switch.
Long bond covers more area per sheet, so it needs fewer sheets and leaves fewer joins to tape. If your printer takes it, use it.
Making it hold up on the wall
Paper tears at the tape line before it tears anywhere else. Two things help: tape the joins from the back so the front stays clean, and use the glue-flap option rather than butt-joining, so each sheet sits under its neighbour instead of meeting it edge to edge.
For anything that has to survive being carried outdoors, back the finished banner with a sheet of cardboard or run packing tape along the whole reverse.
Keeping it from printing blurry
A design pulled from a phone screenshot or a Facebook download often does not have the pixels for a 3 ft banner. The quality meter at the top of the settings tells you before you print, and turns red when the picture genuinely will not hold up.
If it does, either shrink the banner or start from the original file rather than a re-shared copy.