Thanks to all of you for your replies. I keep seeing all these amazing figures and the flags are much larger than I thought they should be realistically, but boy do they look nice. The plastic card concept is quite interesting, but with my luck, I'll probably burn myself or set the house ln fire!!
As for cutting out plain white paper...I was thinking about doing this anyways, but thanks for recommending it again. Reinforcement to do something by "skilled veterans" is always helpful.
Again, thanks to all of you for your assistance and advice. Now I'll have to go experiment...
Regards,
Hitman