If itās no trouble, could I ask where you get your stickers made/manufactured through? Theyāre lovely quality and I was hoping to find someone who offered holo customizations too.
i make my stickers myself! i print + apply holo film + cut on a silhouette portrait.
but as for places to get holo stickers made in general, i've heard of artists ordering from sticker bunnies (offers broken glass holo, plus a whole bunch of other sticker types) and spooky stickers (offers starry holo, and a die cut peel edge option which i like). they both offer sample packs so you can see what the quality's like before you order!
vograce and zap!creatives have holo options too, but... ://// iāve gotten burned ordering from them before. zap printed my colors lifeless and dull, and vograce made my colors way oversaturated and dark, to the point where i just ended up giving most of them away. i feel like zap & vograce have been going down in quality over the years anyway, but that was my final straw in ordering from them & was part of why i ended up finally getting a silhouette
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Do you use a consistent tag for all of your asks about sticker production and general product making? I'm interested in learning myself, (and I have a million questions lol), but I'm pretty sure you've answered them a few times over already. If you don't have a tag, no worries! And have a great day, I am a total fiend for your Atton content š§”
i didn't, but i've added one now!
and if you're looking for places to get stuff made, there are lists online like merchandise resources and merchandising and conventions 101, and group orders like catstealers kittenbomb and margalita pizza
How do you go about shipping outside of the us/eu/uk area? Do you have to do most of that yourself or do some of your recommended places cover that for you? (I can't imagine they all do lol)
when it comes to my etsy & shopify stores, i have to package & ship all orders myself. there are fulfillment services like white squirrel that can handle that step instead, but i've never looked into it bc i deal with such a low volume of orders--i feel like i'd have to have a 600% funded kickstarter or sell on the same level as umvvelt to even consider the expense lol
but non eu/uk international shipping is really straightforward! i use pirateship and just buy a regular international label and fill out a customs form. no harmonization numbers, no VAT id, just slap that label on a package, drop it off at the post office, and youāre good to go
you can also buy labels through etsy (and shopify and etc), but my impression is that pirateship generally has the best prices, and also i personally hate buying international shipping labels through etsy because one of the last times i did, it was after they changed their system and it was a whole mess that took twice as long and provided far less tracking information than it should have
edit: OH and if you donāt want to fulfill any orders and you donāt want to hire a fulfillment service, you can just sell print-on-demand stuff. you can use a site like redbubble/society6/etc, or there are print-on-demand places that integrate with storefronts like etsy/shopify/bigcartel/etc. i only have experience with the former though!
You totally donāt have to answer this, since youāre very busy, but I wanted to ask a question because I love your buttons and charms so much (I am so excited for them to arrive!!) Iāve wanted to make some fandom charms or buttons to sell on Etsy but, like, I have no idea... how it works, and Iāve googled and tried watching videos of other people explaining it, but I couldnāt quite understand ;-; like Iām mainly confused on, how do you know what size your canvas is supposed to be when you draw on it, so the image doesnāt come out blurry? And how do preorders work? can you recommend what site/company you use that makes your charms and buttons and such? Again you donāt have to feel obligated to answer, Iām just very very lost :āD please have a wonderful day!
sure! lemme break it down into pieces here:
how to know what size your canvas is supposed to be:
your canvas should be, at bare minimum, the size of your final product at 300dpi. some products require bleed (prints, buttons) and some manufacturers might ask for a higher dpi, it just depends.
my recommendation is to start big and just scale it down to whatever size you need later--always scale down, not up, so that you don't lose quality. i tend to start with 7000x7000px canvases for my charms/buttons, which translates to a 11.66x11.66in canvas at 600dpi, which is huge compared to a final product that'll be 3" tall at most.
this does make your file sizes way larger though, so if you're running low on storage space and need to be more economical, i'd say just use a canvas that's the size of your final product + a little buffer for breathing room at 600dpi.
so for a charm that's 3" tall, i'd probably start with a 3.5x3.5in canvas (3" for the charm, 0.5" for breathing room while you're drawing) at 600dpi
and for a button that's 2.25" in diameter, i'd go with a 2.75x2.75in canvas at 600dpi
how do preorders work:
preorders are handy in two cases: when you don't know how much demand there is for a product and want to avoid over/under stocking, or when you don't have enough funds to make that initial investment to stock the product yourself.
scenario 1: you want to sell a charm design, and buy 50 of them to stock in your store. you only sell 20 of them. if only you'd run a preorder, you'd know exactly what the demand was for the design, and you'd only buy as many charms as you need.*
scenario 2: you want to sell a charm design. you know it'll be popular, and that you'll easily sell 100 of them, but you don't have the funds to buy 100 of them at once yourself. if you run a preorder, the orders that come in will fund the purchase.
*very important to running preorders: when you place the order with the manufacturer, always buy a few extra. i do maybe 10-20% extra at least.
this is why: suppose that 100 preorders are placed, and you order exactly 100 charms to fill them. when your order arrives, you find out that 3 charms were misprinted, and can't be shipped out for the preorder--so you're down to 97. while you're trying to figure out what to do about the 3 orders that you can no longer fill, you then find out that 5 of the preorder packages you sent out went missing in the mail--meaning those orders need to be refunded or replaced, meaning that in total you're now out 8 charms. then, while you're contemplating placing a reorder, you find out that there's still demand for the charm from people who missed the original preorder. if you'd ordered 120 charms in the beginning, you'd instead have 12 charms left at the end of these mishaps, which you can sell as in-stock product.
what site/company to use for charms/buttons:
for charms, the most beginner-friendly place imo is zap!creatives. their selection should be enough to cover the basics. i also used to buy from inkitlabs, who iirc is a little pricier, but their print quality is the highest out of all the places i've tried, so it's not like it's not worth it.
if you need more niche features/effects, then you'll have to head over to alibaba. you'll have to do your own searching for companies, and vetting/evaluation of those companies, but they have more specialized finishes. just search for "custom acrylic charm" or similar, and set the MOQ (minimum order quantity) down to 10 or so (however many you plan on ordering at once).
here's where the trade-off comes in though: generally, when buying from a us/eu/uk based company, the products will cost more, but the shipping will cost less. when buying from alibaba (china-based companies), the products will cost less, but the shipping will cost more. so if you're buying a lot of products, it might be worth it to pay more for shipping with a company on alibaba. but if you're only ordering a quantity of 10 or so, it might be better to just buy from a us/eu/uk based company.
this goes doubly for buttons. buttons are a lot cheaper than charms, and are actually common in us/eu/uk companies, so if you're only buying buttons, it's usually better to buy local instead of heading over to alibaba.
can you elaborate on making a charm and being able to order it just for yourself? (i uh... have a rarepair otp..... for a dnd podcast.......... no one would buy my merch lol)
yeah of course!Ā i know of two options.Ā thereās zap creatives, which has the usual product listings, āupload filesā button, and a cart, and you donāt have to interact with anyone
then thereās going on alibaba and looking for custom acrylic charms with low moq (minimum order quantity). youāll want to look for an moq of 1, but you could also ask places with moqās of 10 or so if theyāll print just 1 for you (the price would just go up somewhat). you have to do your own checking to make sure the seller is legit, and once youāve decided to order you have to chat with the seller to lay out the details. there arenāt any clear guidelines on the process since each seller does things a little differently, so for me itās super intimidating,Ā but itās worth it price-wise since alibaba seller prices are pretty much guaranteed to be lower than zapās
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Ā I am by no means a pro at this shit but this is some basic bizniss and mark my words, Iām correct:
1. Use PNGs. Please. With transparent backgrounds. It looks so tacky to have your nice cool typography/art on a white square on an off-white mug/shirt/clock. This is the most important tip.
2. Spend 10mins formatting your designs for the various products- especially the phones/mugs/travel cups- make sure itās not chopping off the bottom or the sides
3. Try not to have your design end in an abrupt straight line at the bottom- this occasionally works but play it safe
4. Reformat your design closer/further apart for the sticker design and upload it individually, depending if you want resulting one sticker or multiple- stickers are definitely the most purchased item because theyāre the cheapest, so itās worth doing for sure
5. Stay away from the dorky-ass fonts that came with microsoft word, yeah? Times new roman and comic sans especially but just, like, download druchilla or something. Go on dafont or fontsquirrel or blambot (all free) (blambot especially recommended, itās fantastic) and get yourself something nice.
6. Hashtags are your amigo, amigo- go wild
7. Stay away from the posterise filter if you can
8. Personally I like to search up my quote (or idea, whatever) on the redbubble search engine before I post my work just to see if itās very similar or identical to whatās already out there
9. Donāt post squashed or stretched images
10. Donāt do crappy cliches unless whatever youāre doing is truly clever- noĀ āKeep Calmā, kids
11. Donāt add a vignette- youāre better than that
12. If itās a long quote be sure to center your text rather than having it right-aligned
13. Hi-res or go home, baby!
14. Unless itās a suuuper specific design- this mostly applies to clocks and duvets- put your art on more than just prints and a card; this is not to say that you should put it on EVERYTHING (you shouldnāt- I normally stay away from tapestries and skirts especially)
15. If you are going the leggings and skirts route, or duvets and scarves, your design should probably repeat
16. Iād avoid little square designs in the middle of phone cases in general
17. Be discerning with the whole adult content thing
18. Wisely choose what your design default-ly displays asĀ
19. Have your original design cropped tight for everything for optimal resizing but the art products (prints, posters, cards, art block) in which case make a variant with some chill whitespace around, room to breathe, you feel me
To the anon earlier, I also went to buy ArteStella (the German version) and I bought it from Amazon for around 40$ with the shipping to North America. I'm not sure how much different it is from Piccolo (besides being in German) but the quality of the book was really wonderful! So if you absolutely want ArteStella (the A4 size) and save money on it, this is the way to go!
Thank you for your help, Anon!
As for the differences, the content/art pages are the same for both sized versions. The only difference between them are the size, covers and merchandise that come with or can be used with them.Ā
You can check out the wiki for a bit more information (normal A4 Size / Piccolo A5 Size).Ā
But if there are still further questions about the artbook, then please feel free to ask! I have both of the Japanese version of the artbooks to refer to if required.
