Aileen Uebel started pinstriping only 2 years ago, and has already turned it into her full time hustle. Her delicate style is unique in its own right and she is willing to do it all from Pinstriping, to lettering, murals, and even graphic design. With a cool view on car culture being born in Germany, she grew up watching North American car culture on TV with her dad. So when her family moved here she was stoked to see what she felt only existed on TV, was real life.
Aileen has an interest in drag racing, and even owned a Chevette that although wasn’t very fast, she drag raced it and daily’d it. She currently has a 1969 Pontiac and an OBS Yukon that she daily drives now. She has painted motorcycles, fiberglass race cars, toys, signs, parts, and even pinstriped a vehicle that was at SEMA. She really hopes to one day pin stripe a plane and also wants to be featured in Hot Rod Magazine.
She came out to our “headquarters” and spent the entire day with us pinstriping our 1955 Buick Special “Dead Betty”, which you can follow along on YouTube if you subscribe to our channel (scan the QR code below). We even have the pinstriping and interview with Aileen featured in a video on the channel.
We had Aileen come and pinstripe, with her own flare, the hood, and the roof just above the back window. The main piece of work from the day was lettering across the back trunk lid that says “Dead Betty” with unique gold leaf inlay and green with black outline. She took the green and used it on the other pieces and incorporated purple as well.
I knew I wanted green and gold from the very start, but she brought along a great selection and mixed colors until we found a purple that popped. If you have read the previous articles or watched the rest of the Project Living Dead Girl series, you know that it kind of has a zombie/ gangster theme going for it, so the lettering mimicked a prison style stomach or back tattoo and at the very end we even added a tear drop to seal its fate.
Aileen is fully self taught and prefers to develop her own style instead of being influenced by other pin stripers out there. We have more work we want Aileen and Stellar Designs to do including our Intake provided by FiTech EFI, and “Los Viejos” our 1964 Oldsmobile Super88.
Check out her social media’s including her Instagram @stellar_designs_custom, or her Facebook @Stellar Designs. You can contact her on either of those or via email at stellarcustomdesigns@gmail.com and book her for some work. She travels all over and even got to go to Vancouver Island in BC to do some art work.
Thanks again to Aileen and Stellar Designs for giving “Dead Betty” a makeover, make sure you check out the full interview and video on our YouTube channel.
Article and photos by Brian Holzli
