How I Make My Jewelry on a Shoestring

People just love my little porcelain jewelery pieces and I constantly get asked how I create them. So, for once and for all, I am here writing down the techniques for prosperity and whomsoever wants to try it themselves.





Now, I'm not a real artist, I want to make it clear that I cannot draw so much as a flower that doesn't look like a kindergarten kid did it. All the art I use (mostly fairies, dragons and unicorns), comes from clipart collections. Some are just CD's I picked up over the years and I use the Vapor ArtDisc CD and the BODART collection. These great clipart collections are from a shirt company called Vapor. I got them from Conde Systems, an outfit that sells equipment for digital imprinting. (Click here to check out Condé)





So I take the clipart of a fairie and add it to a unicorn and maybe some trees and I use CorelDRAW to position them until I am happy with the whole picture. Then I set the pic to be the size of my porcelain piece. The porcelain I also get from Conde, they have oval, square, hearts and star pieces in graduated sizes. These are pre-coated to accept my transferred image.





I print out the picture on sublimation transfer paper, a paper that works with my sublimation inks. The ink is called SubliJet-R, I have a GX e3300N, a Ricoh printer, it is set up to only use this special ink. I print it in reverse, or mirrored and then I place it on top of the porcelain piece. I use heat resistant tape or a spray fixative, called ProSpray (from Conde) to hold the transfer in place. You cannot move the image once it starts heating so don't be tempted to look, it will destroy what you are doing.





Then I put the whole shebang into my little heat press. I have a Hobby Press, a George Knight JP12, it only cost $250, and it's perfect for my small items. I use 400 degrees and keep it pressed for five minutes. The image is then transferred directly to my porcelain. I can also make tee shirts with the same process, they have to be polyester shirts and it doesn't work well on dark colors, but the technique is much the same, just press for one minute if doing shirts.





Above you see a porcelain ornament from the Conde website, they are really nice, as well. I have gold and silver findings, little hooks, pieces that hold the porcelain, I get these from Michael's Crafts. I add these as I see fit, attach a chain or a pin back. The best jewelry glue is E-6000, which is available at Michaels (Conde also has it). Sometimes I use a little glitter glue to attach strategic rhinestones. Voila! That's how I do it!

If you want to make similar jewelry, you can call the folks at Conde at 800-826-6332 and order the following:

GX5050 Printer......................$200
Set of 4 Inks..........................$240
Sublimation Paper.................$20
JP12 Heat Press....................$250
Porcelain...............................$1 each

Or, go online to the Conde website and click here to order the package deal for $450. So, there you have it folks, get started, you can be an artist, too!

Amplified Perspectives

A beautiful 8" x 10" aluminum personalized photo plaque, a ChromaLuxe plaque, decorated with the client's picture, should be priced about $19.82. This was the pricing conclusion we came to in my last post, using a 35% markup formula.





Now, here is the point where you have to become clever. Upgrade, upsell, add-on value, whatever you want to call it, you must offer options to make your sale more substantial. Offering clients a choice between one upgrade or another obscures the option of taking the plaque as it is and going home. The Chromaluxe Aluminum Panels come in different finishes, matte or glossy as well as silver or white based. When you first take the commission from your client you should help them choose the best finish for their photo. Offering these initial choices also will help you when you guide your client through the upgrade process.





Now, everyone will want to hang their panel on the wall, one would assume, so it's probably only fair to offer a simple keyhole mount as a "free" option (they cost $2-2.50, so that would add $6 to your pricing, now at $24) OR, you can say, look here, this is a full back mount, which greatly adds to the "gravitas" of the panel:





These mounts add weight to the finished product and look fantastic, you will want to have examples already mounted to show your client and they will be greatly impressed. These are made of wood and painted dark black. (Just a small note: this mount does not come in 8"x10", so you would have to trim it down and repaint the edges to use it). These cost 5.70, so you would try to bend the price offered at $15+ to meet your 35% goal, so, $19.82 + $17.10 = 36.92, very pricey. I would be happy to say $30, myself.





Now, this mount is the clever one to promote, it costs about $3.50, so you can price it in the middle of the two outlined above. This one is made so you can actually sublimate your business data onto it along with any other special information about the picture subject, if you like. Imagine your client's friends and visitors who admire the pretty photo and look behind to copy down your phone number so they can call you for a similar plaque for themselves...

To recap, offer your client the standard mounting and state the plaque is $24, or they can have the sublimated mount for $27, or the full backed mount for $30.
So, to recap, Here's what we've got so far:

$5.00 for the plaque
.80 for the ink
.14 for the paper used
1.00 miscellaneous
______
$6.94 total cost
÷ .35
_______
19.82 amount to charge, round to 19.00; profit $12.06

Adding small mount= cost $2.50, charge $24; profit $14.56
Add full back mount= cost $7.50, charge $30; profit $17.36
Add sublimated mount= cost $3.50, charge $27; profit is $16.56

Either way, you have upgraded your sale! Next, we can talk about other ways to upsell.

Profit in Perspective

Having received a lot of catalogs in the past few weeks, I'm looking really hard at the items I could make with my dye sublimation set up, what these products sell for and what the profit margin is.

When I was a restaurant manager, we had a formula for pricing meals:

Cost of your product divided by 35% = menu price
or
$8.50 ÷ .35= $24.29

That formula keeps your cost at 35%. So, following that formula, suppose I want to sell a beautifully decorated plaque? There are lovely aluminum 8" x 10" aluminum plaques made by Unisub, called ChromaLuxe plaques. They are richly coated with the dye sublimation poly and the images are spectacular. Here's one:



Now, the 8"x10" version of that plaque is only $4.50. Add in shipping, say 50 cents, then look at what getting the image involves:

Is this a photo that you take or one that is provided? Add in cost of film, plus your photographer's fee. If they provided the photo, if it is a studio shot, it would be unethical and illegal to reproduce it. If it's s homegrown snap, do you have to scan and edit it or download it from a jump drive, email or whatever? Then there will be time spent sizing and cleaning up the shot, maybe adding text or borders, possibly blowing it up to fit the desired plaque. Add in your time spent doing that. If resizing is involved, you may need special software, so add in for that.

I once had my aunt give me a 20 year old 3"x5" cracked and faded Mardi Gras Ball photo. She had carried it in her wallet forever. She wanted it on a 8"x10" aluminum plaque. Using PhotoShop Elements, I was able to blow it up and do some color correcting, filling in the cracks with nearby colors. You have to work with the layers, as dye sublimation is so detailed, added coloring can be spotted on a finished item like a 3D illusion. I was pretty satisfied with my result and I stopped there. When the plaque was printed, I was a little disappointed with the less than sharp faces and other small defects. This was a gift for my aunt and she was thrilled, but next time I will use a software program called Genuine Fractals, by OnOne. The investment of $150 for that software will be well worth it, as it makes resizing a breeze. It requires you have PhotoShop, but it also works with Elements. So, am I justified in adding a little to my cost in terms of the cost and use of my software and time?

When you are ready to make the plaque, consider what else you may need. The instructions call for protective paper and ProSpray, which is a spray fixative. So, these two items add a small amount to the cost, plus the cost of your sublimation paper, which is about 14 cents a sheet.

Ink cost is a little hard to figure but using my Ricoh GX7000 and paying $110 per ink cartridge, using four, at 68ml each, brings me to the sublimation expert I rely on, David Gross, who, as the genius behind Conde Systems sets a rule of thumb for the Ricoh printers and SubliJet-R sublimation ink, at one penny per square inch. 8x10 = 80 cents for my creation.




So, to recap, Here's what we've got so far:

$5.00 for the plaque
.80 for the ink
.14 for the paper used
1.00 miscellaneous
______
$6.94 total cost
÷ .35
_______
19.82 amount to charge

Now, herein lies the rub, these plaques are especially worthy of that $20 price tag, they are breathtakingly lovely, but will the market bear that pricing? Probably not at the flea market, on ebay or online. A nice gallery uptown could sell artist reproductions for that easily, but my family and friends, and the folks in my area would count that as too high. That's when a sliding scale makes more sense. In most cases, doubling the cost works for my products. So I would probably sell it for $15, adding $5 if there are special artwork requirements.

The main point of the exercise is to figure what is involved in cost. If I had a brick and mortar store, and employees, I would have to add in for them as well. If I ever become a famous artist or photographer, I can add that in, too. If you want one, better order quick, before the price rises with my fame.

Making Coffee Mugs for Profit and Fun

Coffee mugs have become the ubiquitous item in every office and household. People have mugs that show off their favorite sentiments, that display their vacation preferences, political views and parental status. The range of decor that a small mug can sport is mind blowing!

Deciding what to put on mugs that will sell can be the first hurdle. Since we have the "Mermaid's Chest", I wanted to focus on sea worthy themes. My requirements for the art include high resolutions and copyright. A lot of older artwork has come into public use by right of public domain and they are posted online on university and historical collection websites, and this is my treasure trove. So, looking in Public Domain art archives, here are some great seaworthy pictures:






Now, of course, you need to adapt your art for your coffee mug. Conde Systems now offers pre-cut mug paper to print on, sublimation paper that is already the perfect size for standard 11 or 15 ounce coffee mugs. I use the dye sublimation process to make all my items. If this is your first read of this blog, I can tell you briefly that you require sublimation ink to produce the transfers you will use to make these mugs.





So, getting out my handy software, PhotoShop Elements, I create a blank picture that is 3.5" x 9.125", the same as my mug paper. Then I import my first picture and position it where it will look right, then add the second one. Then, since it's just a line drawing, I flipped it horizontally, added color and my shop name. Then it looks like this:




So, now I'm ready to make my mug. Now, they make a heat press just for mugs, the George Knight DK3 mug press, but I do not have the funds for one, yet, so I got what they call a dye wrap, or mugwrap. You take the imaged transfer and wrap it around the mug, then wrap it tight with the dyewrap, pop it into your oven for 6 minutes, then dump it in room temperature water to stop the sublimation process. Here's the wrap I use:




I use this with my little toaster oven. It is not a good idea to do mugs in the oven you cook food with, so a small toaster oven is very handy, just look for one that the mugs fit into. Here's a video showing the whole process:


Here's my finished mug:




I hope you enjoyed this little blog tutorial. By the way, I get my equipment from the lovely folks at Conde Systems.

Halloweenies

Okay, now to turn my attention to which products I could sell for Halloween. I know how to get some great artwork, so let me start there.

If you google "Public Domain Pictures", you will get a nice list of websites that offer images that are free for any use without any problems. I have found many have great old picture postcards and antique greeting cards, so I just added "Halloween" to my query and I found a lovely site: Vintage Greeting Cards . These pictures are great ones to edit and update, plus you can import photos to make them personalized.

A note of caution here: images that are to be blown up need to be high resolution. the average dye sublimation printer profile will flag any image that is less than 95 dpi (dots per square inch). However, 95 is really low and a dpi of 200+ is to be preferred. There are programs like Genuine Fractals available to punch up smaller images, but there is only so much that can be done. Most digital decorators require photo quality or scanned images. Luckily, the vintage card sites offer high rez copies of the cards, so look for that.



Once I have some pictures to use, then I can decide which products to make. It seems to me that novelty tee shirts would be a great thing to offer. Since these will be worn in the fall, and hopefully sold in cooler climates, I am looking at sweatshirts and long sleeved tees. My favorite supplier is Conde Systems, I have been checking what they have to offer. The nicest shirts in their collection are the long sleeved micro performance Vapor shirts. I like the way they cling to your arms and fall in drapes, very sexy shirts. But, since I am working here on Halloween, I had to get some of the Safety Orange long sleeved shirts from the Basic collection. They are very "cotton-like" and I think my clients will like them. (Polyester is intrinsic to the dye sublimation process I use).

Here's my first creation, I hope you agree it is wonderful:





What did I do? I erased the background and added my own text. You really need Corel or PhotoShop for these, way too much for my budget, so I have PS Elements, much cheaper way to go! Want one? $15 each, plus shipping, just shoot me an email. bobbi@bobbicoker.com. Have a spooky day!

Using Family Crests for Sublimated Products

Every Christmas I have to create gifts for my in-laws, my immediate family and my extended family, not to mention my work buddies. Throughout the twenty two years I have done this, a variety of options have become clear. I can either make a loong list and try to make or buy individual items or I can give everyone pretty much the same thing and distribute accordingly.

Back in the day, I started out painting on tee shirts with acrylic paint and "puff" paint, accented with rhinestones. I used stencils I created from mylar and ended up working way into the wee hours making every shirt a fabulous unique creation. Very often the recipients had no idea how much work went into these items and I never saw them worn nor did I feel that my efforts were appreciated.

Then I was overseas for seven years and used ebay to mail home various gifts for a select list of family and friends. Often some people did not even let me know they had received the gifts, much less how they enjoyed them. I will have to do a blog on poor manners, but my main point today is that I finally found a popular gift idea that not only seems to be easy to do, but is so well liked, apparently, that I have people who were not on my gift list calling me to offer to pay me to make them one too.

My secret: Family Crests (aka Coat of Arms)! Luckily, both my family (Coker) and my husband's (McMullen) both have these crests, and I have a great time using the same images on a variety of gift items. The first ones I made were tee shirts for my husband's family. Here's what I did:

First, I listed all the sizes I needed, then purchased Vapor shirts, which are all great polyester moisture wicking shirts. The Basic line is just as comfortable and mimics cotton very well. The link provided takes you to the company I found with the lowest pricing around.

Then I found the McMullen family crest online. I actually found several and had to consult other family members until I located the one that everyone agreed was the "correct" one. It's rather boring, just a shield with a bloody hand holding a sword and three red crescents. So, back to Google images where I found an elaborate one with two stags and a wolf (by the way, ask Images for the "Large" images, they reproduce better). I used my handy (and inexpensive) PhotoShop Elements to dub in the original shield. Then I added "McMullen Clan" across the bottom and on the lower right I added text that named the relatives who had passed away and on the left I personalized each shirt with the name of the intended recipient. The shirts were a real hit and I still get nice reactions when I wear mine.

Last year I took the smaller version of the shield and put it on small sterling silver charms and that is the one that everyone really wants, my husband has cousins he hardly ever hears from calling him up to see how he can get one.

Next year, I am planning to make plaques, as I found some shield shaped ones by Unisub that are fabulous. They come in three sizes, so I can make the best one for my mother-in-law and use the smallest ones for the kids and medium for the other adults.

I'm looking into selling them on ebay, offering to provide them with any family crest, so I will let you know how that works out, as well as post some pictures of my creations.

Keeping a Small Business Alive

Well, it's been awhile since I posted anything, the BP Oil Spill has been quite a stall for my business plan. Instead of making shirts for local yachties, I have been forced to plan some new angles. Since I am located on the road to the beach at Dauphin Island, the dream of opening a storefront may never happen at this location.

Some money could be made in political tee shirts, that is a consideration, but I have started to focus on traveling to flea markets and fairs. I am particularly attracted to the idea of trying a Renaissance Faire. We have a camper and could load up everything and have a weekend booth pretty easily. I am scouring the web for schedules of upcoming faires and will choose one to be the guinea pig soon.

I thought I would make most of my goods well ahead of time, and then bring the printer and heat press and take photos in front of a clever painted backdrop and offer personalized items to the fair-goers.

Then there are some items that will be easy and cheap to offer. There are some cool inkjet printed balloons here (http://www.dyetrans.com/sublimation_blank_balloons.php). These are pretty nice, you actually print right on the balloons. They don't float, they have sticks. There are templates for all kinds of occasions and several are flowery and very suitable for the fairs. I plan to design some just for the kids. I can sell them for $6 and $8 and make a tidy margin for myself.

I have lots of ideas for other small things and a few big projects. Stay tuned and I will start posting my plans.