raindave,

nice looking little Kaos !! Excellent work as always.

Suggestion
instead of vinyl letters..... the sign shop can cut shaps/text using "masking" material. This is masking adhesive, so it is removeable. Request they leave a bit of additional boarder if possible. Also request that they do not separate or remove anything after it is cut. Remove the parts you do not need on your own - this way there are no mistakes. You may want to aquire some transfer tape (or use wide masking tape)

MAYA lettering here was painted on using sign shop cut method - Ive also painted some of the racing planes this way. The fun thing is, you can get pretty creative with the mask - often enough a DXF file translates and cuts nicely.

That will give you similar results to using frisket paper, tape, or what ever else masking wise.

Frisket paper is great stuff... Ive used that a bunch of times too.

Probably wise on shooting the clear first as planned.