supplies suppliers

i know when i was starting my shop, i had so many questions that i wished i could ask other digital artists, but i was way too shy to ask them.  i wanted to know what kind of printer they used and what they thought of it, where they got envelopes and clear sleeves and chipboard and other supplies.  so here is what i use and where i get it from, and how much it costs.

Clockwise from top right:
1. I usually get my ink from Epson online, unless I run out in the middle of a job and I need ink really quickly, in which case I will go to Office Depot (it's only $1-$2 more).  Ink is $18.99 for each cartridge, and I probably buy about 3 cartridges per month.  my printer uses 6 inks (CMYK plus a light cyan and a light magenta).
2. My printer is the Epson Stylus Photo 1400 Ink Jet Printer.  I like it pretty well, I haven't had any major issues with it, no print heads clogging or anything, and I've had it for almost a year.  It's a large format printer, so I can print up to 13"x19".  Some of the more expensive printers have a light black ink, and I think that might be a better option for someone who prints a lot of grays, because my grays sometimes come out looking purple.  My printer was $300 with an $80 rebate.  I'm ashamed to say that I waited to long to do the rebate online, and I wasn't able to get it, so I actually paid the $300.  I'm an idiot, I know. 
3. I get my Flat Mailers from packagingprice.com.  I get the brown kraft color envelopes for my larger prints (I have one large enough for 11x14's (about $36 for 100), and one big enough for 13x19s.)  I get the white self-sealing mailers for my 8x10 prints, $29.60 for a case of 100, and I think I've only had one issue where one showed up bent, and I use USPS first class mail.
I started out unprepared and would go to CVS to buy envelopes when I made a sale, and that is a BAD IDEA, they are like $3.00 each or something.  Also, I went to Office Depot to buy mailing tubes for posters and they were like  $7 each... then I found some at Kroger for 50 cents each.  PackagingPrice.com also has mailing tubes in pretty colors, they are $36.50 for a case of 50.
4. For my larger envelopes, there are tabs to close the top but I want to make sure they can't be opened by a random person, so I got some cute woodgrain printed tape from tapeswell.  It was about $10 for the roll. I love the look of it, the only thing I wish was that the pattern was ongoing and didn't reset every 6 or so inches.
5. I get my clear envelopes from cistamps.com.  I have 8x10, 5x7, 9x14, and 11x14.  8x10 is $14 per 100 envelopes.  When I have a print larger than that, I will cut the seam off the left side of one and off the right side of another, then overlap them.
6. I get my large format paper from Epson.  I use the Ultra Premium Presentation Matte Paper, $51.50 for 50 sheets, and anything I print over 8x10 gets printed on that paper then I cut it down to size with an X-Acto Knife.  
7. I get my 8.5x11 paper from Red River Paper.  It is called Aurora Art White, it is 100% cotton rag with a 13.5 mil thickness, and it has a slight texture.  It is really pretty and absorbs the colors really well to make them bright.  I used to print on a slightly semigloss paper, and it left the ink on top of the paper instead of absorbing it, and the colors would look washed out and not as solid as a result.  I really like this paper.  the only problem I have is that my printer will not pull in one sheet at a time if I put several pieces in the queue, so I have to sit there and put in one sheet of paper at a time.

Also I put a sheet or two of chipboard in my packages to prevent bending, and I get it from uline.  I got a large pack of 190 sheets of 18"x24" for $52, and I cut them down to size.  This is something that is really annoying and in the future I'll probably try to find 8x10's so I am not constantly having to cut chipboard for every order.  Or I could take some to a printer with one of the big automatic cutters, and get them to cut a bunch of 8x10's for me, if I ever quit being too proud to ask for help.

And in case you're wondering, I also put a thank you card and a business card (both of which I print myself)  in all my packages.

So, hopefully for anyone that is looking for information on supplies this was helpful.  Starting out on etsy as a digital printer is easy because you can just put the picture of your artwork online without having actually printed it, then when you finally start making sales you run around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to figure out how you're supposed to ship something.

And don't be like me and be too shy to ask other artists for their help or their opinions, I'd be more than happy to answer any questions anyone might have!

new background

i'm playing around with my blog design today, because I found an awesome background generator called Japonizer that has some cool patterns and you can change the color and size to create a pretty background. of course this means i'll now have to update my header, but that was long overdue anyway, my entire shop needs a makeover.

I found Japonizer by going to the blog Pugly Pixel, which I found by reading my google reader post from oh my word. Pugly Pixel found it via @smashingmag's twitter feed, which has some good design resources and is worth following. i love days when i just get to surf the internet, finding interesting people and pretty things as i click along.

so which ones do y'all like?  i'm trying to keep them pretty neutral so they're not so busy.  plus i'm loving yellow and gray these days so i might do something with a gray background with yellow accents.

Random thoughts of the day...

Hi everyone! How was everyone's weekend? My bff Lindsey and her husband Matt came to visit (they attended a wedding on Friday night, so they stayed with us).  You saw my pic from Friday night- we played whirlyball! And boy am I sore! My husband has serious bruises on his foot and his stomach.
Here's a video if you've never heard of Whirlyball- you are basically in bumpercars playing basketball with little scoops and a plastic ball.


It's pretty crazy and REALLY HARD to score, but it was a good time.  There's a bar right next to the court, and what is interesting is that as everyone drank more, we got better at whirlyball.... coincidence? I think not!

Since my friend was in town, we went out to dinner a couple times - Twisted Taco and Ippolito's - and played Cranium!!! and some Wii bowling and tennis.

And my husband and I crammed in the entire 3rd season of True Blood in 2 days and watched the 4th season premiere on Sunday... I've read all the Southern Vampire Series books, and they are taking serious liberties with the story, but I think it's an interesting twist that it jumped forward a year.   I think it'll be interesting that Bill is now the snooty politician, and I sooo hope they'll go ahead and let Sookie & Eric start their love story! 

So, that was my weekend... has anyone else played whirlyball? And what did you think about True Blood?

Friday night fun!

Whirlyball!


p.s. does anyone know why my pic has little squares all over it? hmmm.  wonder if it's a blogger phone app issue.

The Process - From Concept to Final Product

I've really enjoyed reading some process posts by other designers, and learning what goes into their craft.
I think the first one I read was by Jan of Daisy Janie, where she posted about how her doodles transform into fabric designs.  She also linked to Jessica Swift, who showed how she turns an illustration into a colored print using photoshop, and to Stephanie Corfee, who showed how her doodles become prints. 

So, I've decided to show what goes into my artwork.  I mostly use Adobe Illustrator.  The main difference between Photoshop and Illustrator is that Photoshop creates artwork with pixels, Illustrator creates artwork with vectors.  So if you draw a line in Photoshop and you zoom in really close, you'll be able to see the different pixels, but if you create a line with Illustrator, no matter how much you zoom in, the line looks the same - crisp and straight and not blurry.  With illustrator, when you create a shape, you can make it infinitely larger with no blurring or separating, whereas with a picture, for instance, which is made up of pixels, if you make it larger than its set resolution, you will begin seeing blurriness and if you keep zooming you will see each separate color pixel.

Anyway, enough about that, on to the process!

I start out with a concept in my head, and a rough idea of how I want things laid out.  Then sometimes I might go straight to Illustrator to start drawing shapes, but in this case I was at my day job and when I get bored I doodle on notebook paper.  I am by no means a good drawer.  I even had to take some sketching classes in college, and it just takes too long to do good sketches for me- I don't want to bust out a ruler and the little curvy ruler thing they made us buy.  The only thing I was good at that was drawing-related was charcoal drawings, and the way I made them look cool was by making everything look really blurry so you could tell what it was from far away but up close it was just some blobs.  So basically, precise drawing is not for me.

I get so off-topic when I write.  But its also the way I tell stories, so imagine how my family/friends feel when they just want me to get to the point.

Anyway, so I make a drawing, and that's basically just a reference for me to start from.  I then go into Illustrator and start drawing.  For this piece, I liked the way my handwritten words looked, and I knew I wouldn't be able to replicate it with a commercial font, so I decided to draw my letters using the pen tool.

So after I played around with the thickness of the letters,  I drew my rainbow and started playing around with fonts and the placement and colors of my "over the rainbow".

Then I made the rest of the letters and played with the sizes to make everything fit in there.

Then I started playing with colors to see if I wanted a background design or just a plain color. I thought yellow would be a good color since it's like the sun, or a sky blue.  (that green line down the middle is my guide for making sure my 'sunbeams" were in the middle.

I'm thinking I like the blue more than the yellow.  And then I decide since it's supposed to be a sky, maybe I should add some cute swirly clouds to the background, so I drew one and took a pic with my phone.

And this would have been a million times easier if I had drawn on plain white paper, because then I could have just used the "live trace" function and Illustrator would have done this for me, but next I used the pen tool in Illustrator to redraw the clouds.

Then I placed the clouds in the background of the image and moved them around a bit and resized them until I thought they looked good, and I also had to work on how the script font flowed together.  When you type on a path (in this case I used a curved line that matched the shape of the rainbow), it rotates the letters, so you need to change the font to outlines and reshape the tails of the letters so they connect smoothly.  Here you can see how they weren't smooth:

And after fixing a few of my drawn letters that I wasn't happy with, I now have a finished print!  To go from an illustrator file to a jpg, I save it as a pdf, then "place" in photoshop, then do File/Save for Web and save it as a high quality jpg.  And voila!

I also decided I think it might need a little less busy-ness going on, so I made a white version also:

Print available in the shop here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/76516510/8x10-print-birds-fly-over-the-rainbow

I'd love to see some other process posts, no matter what your craft is! Please post to any process posts you find in the comments!

Featured on PrettySouthern

Thanks to the awesome Kat of HeartandCrafts for doing a featured post on Priss Designs over on PrettySouthern!  It's all about how my southern roots influence my modern design.  Check it out!

DIY Frames from Inexpensive IKEA Mirrors

Just a little note: I’m playing around with settings on my new phone, trying to figure out how to make my pictures look good.  Obviously I haven’t quite gotten the hang of it, so bear with me.

In 2010, I purchased this beautiful calendar from ChelseaVictoria on etsy.  It has been on the wall in my husband’s office and I finally decided to take it down since it has been out-of-date for a good 6 months now, and I wanted to frame the pictures and hang them in a grouping.  Each month was printed out on 5x7 photo paper, and the pictures themselves were 5”x5”.  I wanted to hang a grouping of 9, so I went to IKEA in search of frames.  I knew they had square frames that were matted to 5”x5”, so I looked there first, and I couldn’t believe the IKEA Ribba frames were $10 each!  I’m pretty cheap, and there is no way I was spending $90 on frames.  So I looked around, trying to find some cheaper frames.  I found several that were $5, but no square frames.  I had pretty much given up on my IKEA frame search and was wandering into the mirror section when I saw these MALMA mirrors for only $2.99 each. 

I estimated that the mirror opening was about 4” wide (I could’ve gone and gotten one of the handy dandy tape measures, I know), which means I would have to trim a bit off the pictures, but at $3 each, they were definitely budget-friendly and I loved the big thick black frame that would surround each little picture. 

So, I got 9 frames for less than $30! First, I measured the square opening (which actually ended up being closer to 3.75” square) and made a template out of chipboard that I could use as a cutting guide.  I then cut around the chipboard guide after I determined how I wanted the picture to look, since I had to cut off a good bit on each side.  

All the pictures cut to 3.75" squares.

Next I had to add the hanging hardware that came with the MALMA mirrors.  They come with two little eyelet screws and a length of white string, and I didn’t want to hang mine by string, so I just measured the middle of the frame and used my drill to make a small starter hole (I have no idea how you would get the screw started if you didn’t have a drill, IKEA always makes things difficult), then inserted the eyelet screw. 

Then I fit each picture to the opening of its specific frame (some needed to be trimmed a little more to fit) and just attached them to the mirror with painter’s tape.  So if I decide to change the pictures or if I want the mirrors intact, I won’t have an issue.  

I decided to hang the pictures on an empty wall in my bathroom.  I used a level and a tape measure to hang the nails 14” apart (if I had it to do again, I probably would’ve done it an inch or 2 closer).  Since I just used the one eyelet to hang the frames, they were pretty crooked to begin with, they didn’t want to hang straight, so I used some painter’s tape on the back of the frame and used my level to make them straight and stuck them to the wall.  One has already come loose, so I may need to use some Velcro or something with a little more friction to keep it in place.  

 And, voila! I paid $15 for the calendar (it was on sale), and around $30 for the frames, so I got a whole wall of art that packs a big punch for $45!

What I Want Wednesday!

It's Wednesday, which means "what" and "want" make for some awesome alliteration, and I want to share some things that I've been coveting recently.

Feather Tea Towels from MichelleBrusegaard on Etsy.  I love the color!

Pad of Paper shaped like an iPhone! from becksorange on etsy.  So creative.

Patterned Notebook in Scallops by inkwhimsy on etsy.  Only $5!

Yellow grid-printed pillow from wickedmint on etsy.  Love the chair too! Read how she found it on the side of the road on her blog.

Rain Drop Coasters by Bonni1982 on etsy.  So cute!

Hope you guys are having a great week, our air conditioner is broken in my office, so we're sweating it out to avoid having to mingle with people in the other parts of the office that we may not be too fond of.  But on the upside, we get to wear tank tops to work!

"like" me?

I'd really like it if you "like" me on facebook, and i will like you forever!
I'm hosting a giveaway for two free art prints, and all you have to do is become a fan on facebook to enter!
Good luck!

fill in the blank fridays

1.   This weekend I'm       hosting a couples baby shower for our friends beth & be.  they're our first friends to have a baby, so it'll be interesting to see how this shift to parents affects them so we'll get a glimpse into that world - which will probably affect whether or not we decide to have kids.

2.  My last vacation was   at the beginning of May we went to the Dominican Republic!

3.  My next vacation will be     who knows... before this last vacation we hadn't really been on a vacation since our honeymoon 2.5 yrs ago...

4.  My favorite way to relax is   just cuddling on the couch with my doggy, watching tv or reading a book.

5.  When vacationing one should always     wear sunscreen! geez, I say this every time - we're gonna be good about reapplying sunscreen so we don't get burnt - and it never fails that we get burnt.  

6.  When vacationing one should never      worry- just relax and forget about life for a bit.

7.  The best part about a vacation is      getting away from work for a little while.  

The Story of Me

OK this is seriously long. 

But it takes a long time to tell why I am the way I am, haha.

If I had thought 10 years ago about where I would be today and what I would be doing, it would definitely not have had the words “design” or “artist” anywhere in the mix.  When I was little, I went through phases of what I wanted to be- I have them written down each year in a “Through the School Years” scrapbook my mom had bought.  I had quite a range of aspirations, which included dance teacher, author, tornado chaser (I kid you not, I really loved the movie Twister), ghost hunter (yes, I was weird I guess).  In high school, I loved math and science, and by my senior year I had decided I wanted to be an engineer.  I loved space, so I decided I wanted to work at NASA and the best way to do that was to become an Aerospace Engineer (AKA rocket scientist!!).  So I left Albany, GA for the big city of Atlanta and Georgia Tech.  Side rant: Which, by the way, is the Georgia Institute of Technology, just like MIT, not a technical college, which apparently some people think when they hear Georgia Tech.  It is ranked #35 in the country in universities, #7 among public schools, and #4 for engineering.  Apparently some people think it is a school for remedial technical majors.  Ok rant done.  

My friend Holly and I (I'm on the left) before a football game.

                So, I got to college, pledged a sorority (Zeta Tau Alpha), became a cheerleader, started hanging out at fraternities & partying, started dating my now-husband, and didn’t put going to class at the top of my priority list.  I went from having a 4.2 GPA and being in the top 10 in my class in high school to a 1.95 GPA after my first year of college.  I got a D in my Intro to Aerospace class, and had decided about halfway through the semester that I wanted to switch majors – everything we were learning about was airplanes, and while it interested me a little, after finding out you only take one class in 4 years even related to space shuttles, I decided rocket science was not for me.

                I started looking through the GT Course Catalog for something that interested me, and there wasn’t a whole lot to choose from after you decide you don’t want to be an engineer.  I read the description for Industrial Design, and decided it sounded exciting.  This is what the course catalog says now, so it was probably pretty similar at the time: “Industrial design is the professional practice of creating products that enhance the function, usability, value, and appearance of products with the goal of benefiting the user, manufacturer, community, and the environment. Also known as product design, industrial design education prepares students to design systems and tangible artifacts including, consumer and recreational products, business and industrial products, medical and computer equipment, and transportation and environments. Both generalist and specialist, industrial designers tend to be part artist, part entrepreneur and engineer.”

                Now, just so we have this straight, I never considered myself “artsy” – I was an intellectual, not a creative.  I had gotten through school with flying colors on the basis of my ability to cram information in my head then spit it back out at test time.  I was on the Math Team, for crying out loud!  So I’m not entirely sure what possessed me to go into a field that was all about design, but I think I had always had a secret part of me that wanted to be artistic.  When I was in 5^th grade, every night I drew pictures of horses.  I seriously had an entire wall covered with drawings of horses.  They were not particularly good, but I don’t think they were too terrible, either.  I think I was obsessed with the book Misty of Chincoteague.  I took one art class in high school, but I was a senior in there with a bunch of freshman because I needed one more elective, and I think the teacher pretty much let me leave everyday because I was taking college classes.

So anyway, to Industrial Design I went.  It was in the College of Architecture, so all the majors take 1^st year “Common Studio”, where you dabble a little in Architecture, Industrial Design, and Building Construction.  You do a lot of drafting, some model building out of chipboard, some drawing and basic art classes, and at the end you decide which major you want to be in.    What you don’t realize is so different than “regular school” is that you are literally pulling all-nighters for weeks at a time to get project after project done.  It’s not “hard”, per se, it’s just So.Much.Work.  It’s completely different than anything I had ever been exposed to.  There were no tests, there were critiques.  Critiques where you hadn’t slept in 3 days and you have to get up in front of the class and outside reviewers who have no idea how hard you worked on something and try to defend why your paper model interpretation of the word “hallucination” is the awesomest thing ever.  After 4 years of it, it breaks you down.  You start to think everyone else’s ideas are better than yours… and maybe they are, but the point is you were trained to design things and you have more skills than anyone else once it comes to finding jobs, but since you felt inferior to everyone in your class, it expands to life once you graduate.

This is a hanging beverage cart for airplanes that I designed along with Lauren Duke.  We built the entire interior of the plane and the cart out of PVC and cardboard.

OK almost done, I promise.  Fast forward to graduation, when luckily I had put resumes on a million job sites 6 months before graduation, had gotten a personal assistant job and was going to do that for a bit while job hunting, and a chemical sales company needed a graphic designer to do all their marketing materials, and called me out of the blue.  Three weeks after graduation I started my “big girl job”, and I’ve been there ever since.   I proofread product info sheets and MSDS’s all day, sometimes get to make a brochure or a promotion, but I definitely needed a creative outlet in my life. Oh, and I got married somewhere in between all that!

My husband Conor and I on our wedding day!

So, while trying to find ways to be creative, my friend Rachel and I would get together to make things on the weekends, painting or making jewelry, and we painted a few things one weekend and I decided to put them on etsy.com.  I started out with like 5 paintings in my shop, and I think it took about 3 months before I even sold one thing, and when I got like 10 views in a day I would be so excited.  While browsing around etsy, I found a lot of shops that sold digital art, artwork that they would make using illustrator or photoshop and sell prints.  I started drawing and coming up with ideas, and on the weekends I would work on my artwork.  I finally put some prints in the shop, and started building up my portfolio of artwork.  I asked the printing company that I work with at my day job if he could print my work as it sold, and I would go pick them up a couple times a week at lunch.  As I started getting more sales, I was having to go pick up prints almost every day, and it was becoming too much, and I had actually started making a little bit of a profit, so I finally bought a printer! That’s when I really felt like I had a business.  I finally had a home studio where I could work, and I had my little stacks of envelopes and chipboard backers and thank you cards, and I would print things out and go to the post office a couple times a week.

Fast forward to now, and I am starting to hope that I can really make my business a Business, and I hope if you read this story all the way to the end that I didn’t bore you too badly!

Oh Happy Day is Giving Away a Trip to Paris!

A really great blog, Oh Happy Day, is giving away a trip to Paris for two to one lucky reader! Check it out! 

http://ohhappyday.com/2011/06/goes-to-paris  

Studio Tour!

I am lucky that I have a space large enough to consider a "studio," but unfortunately having a larger space means I have a bigger mess.  My husband works from home, so he has our 3rd bedroom as his office.  I have our basement, which is pretty large.  I've got a table set up in the corner with my laptop and printer, and a shelving unit to hold my paper/sewing machine/envelopes/ink/other supplies.

Oh, and I apologize for the pics, they were taken with my new HTC Thunderbolt phone and I haven't quite gotten the hang of making them look semi-normal yet.

My printer is an Epson Stylus Photo 1400.  It's great, just a little slow, but that's due to the fact I'm printing at a high DPI to keep my print quality at a level I'm happy with.

I've also got a couple of the cheap plastic drawer units that hold things like paint, paintbrushes, drawing supplies, scrapbook paper, my sewing kit, fabric, and other random bits of projects.

if you look closely it's like a game where you have to find the random objects: quilting hoops, drafting dots, wood glue, stud finder, dremel tool, box of branches, ribbon, drill....

I want to build a nice corner desk with fun matching shelves and colorful bins to hold all my supplies, and have an organized inspiration board, but for now I'll stick with trying to grow my business, and one day maybe I can quit my job and it will make sense to do a studio renovation!

My trusty cutting mat, X-acto knife, and metal ruler for cutting my prints!

 My wall of prints - things that have gotten printed and had imperfections and I don't want to throw them away...

fill in the blank fridays

{photo by Teri Lyn Fisher  photographer and blogger for Fish Food blog}

Make sure to fill out your own blanks and link up at thelittlethingswedo!

1.   I love       miranda lambert   because      her songs are so fun and she's so down to earth and i get to go to her concert TOMORROW!!!!  

2.  A time that mama knew best was    when she told me to get out of that tree, which i did not listen to, which led to my THIRD broken arm in less than 2 years.  And having been through the whole ordeal twice before, I was not crying because my arm hurt, I was crying because I knew my mom was going to yell at me.  

3.  My first kiss went a little like this     BAD.  SERIOUSLY.  truth or dare with a guy that I had liked on and off for a few years but it was just bad.  

4.  My celebrity crush is   - I don't have any celebrities that I'm all about - I have book characters - and coincidentally they happen to both be vampires, I guess I'm a fangbanger wannabe - edward from twilight and eric from the sookie stackhouse chronicles. 

5.  My splurge of choice is     hmmm, you know, i dont splurge often, but i'm going to have to go with something home-related- a picture or a vase or something. I go crazy at target, when I let myself put one thing in the cart that gives me the go-ahead to throw a million things in there with it.  

6.  My biggest accomplishment is       graduating from Georgia Tech.  i was the first one in my family to go to college, and going to a good school was my dream. 

7.  My dance jam of choice is      hmmm.. right now Ceelo's F You is something I cannot help but start bouncing to when I hear it on the radio.

New Mission

Hi out there in bloggerland! Long time no talk! There are going to be some changes around here… or so I hope.  So far I’ve been so sporadic in posting, and I am really going to try to change that.  This blog is entering a new phase, and hopefully, so is my life.  I am striving to make my business a thriving brand.  I want to try new things and really put myself out there and see how everything goes.   I began making art prints a little over a year ago and selling them on etsy.com.  It has actually taken off to some extent.  January 2011 was my biggest month to date, with sales totaling over $1200.  This was due mostly in part to a calendar I made that sold pretty well.  A calendar that I didn’t get into my shop until November, and that I am still getting sales from as of yesterday! I can’t believe people are still buying calendars in June, but I have no problems with it!  Since February, sales have dropped some, but they are definitely up from last year.  And all this has been due to basically no marketing on my part – I haven’t really blogged, I use twitter almost never, I made a facebook page but don’t really utilize it… pretty much the only thing I have been doing is renewing my listings daily on etsy.  

Going forward, I will be social media-ing with a purpose (you like what I did there? Haha. Yes I’m a dork).  I’m using a variety of inspiration sources for blog post ideas, and one of them is Tara Gentile’s 52 Weeks of Blogging Your Passion.  She suggests having a “mission statement” to guide your blog, so here’s my first crack at it!  Priss This is my meeting place for friends and peers – where I connect with new people by showing them all about me – what I love, where I get my inspiration, my stories, my home, my studio, and where they can gain insight into my life and work!

So, I’ll be seeing you around… I hope not sporadically! (clueless reference, if you don’t get it I don’t think we can be friends!)