With all the work I’ve been doing on the business side of art, I have been sad to note that I haven’t really created any new art and, having been sick and cruddy feeling the last week, I haven’t really had any inspiration to boot! But when I saw the huge numbers of people creating ACEO art on Etsy, I decided to use it as a way to get back in the flow! Since they are so tiny, I’m going to try to make one every few days between other things I am working on, without worrying about subject matter (i.e they’ll probably all be cats :P), to see if it brings some inspiration back to make some true portfolio pieces.

ACEO stands for Art Cards, Editions and Originals. They are small trading-card sized works of art so people who normally couldn’t afford original art can still be collectors. You can sell prints or originals, or trade them like Artist Trading Cards! It’s a lot of fun.

Anyway, here is the first one… The Litter Lady.

The Litter Lady was not always such a sorry sight; she was once a world-class cat trainer! Unfortunately, her kitty obsession eventually got the best of her. Now she spends her time burbling in the litter box with her beloved companions forever near–that is, sewed to her head!

You can check out the original at Etsy by clicking here, or the print by clicking here.

This has nothin’ to do with nothin’, but I just wanted to let you kittens know that Rhino Veggie Fruit Bears are the most amazing vitaminy things you could ever hope to stuff in your mouth. Matt’s mom sent him some of these, and while I am always reluctant to try stuff created and eaten by crazed health-food addicts, I tried one anyway. Normally, trying to keep my body from forcefully rejecting the cardboard they call health food takes a serious effort, but these are amazing! Instead, each morning is a struggle as I attempt to eat only my allotted two bears rather than the entire bottle. If they sold these in the candy aisle and had absolutely no vitamins or antioxidants, I would still eat them. The heavenly combination of sweet and sour; the spark of delight as the crisp grains of sugary stuff tempt my palette…

…well that’s getting a bit weird. But they ARE delicious.

….and no, I am not being paid to say that

The Giclee Print Dilemma

I just want to take a (long) moment to gush about my new favorite company ever. I’ve been agonizing over producing quality prints to feel like a true professional, and finally wanted to try Giclee since: everyone pees their pants over it, it’s archival, it’s lightfast, etc. Well, after checking out a few sites, I was disheartened by what seemed like a poopload of hassle for every Giclee printer: Setup fees, having to ship artwork to scan, minimum orders, etc. My purse is not exactly bulging with money, so that wasn’t going to work. I wanted to be able to offer ALL my artwork as prints, and I certainly couldn’t afford all those fees for each piece!

My Order with Iprintfromhome.com

Then I found iprintfromhome via. Etsy. It seemed like everyone had a crush on them, so I decided to go see what the ruckus was all about. “iprintfromhome” wasn’t the most professional-sounding name, so at first I was a little cynical. But I must say I had a wonderful experience after all!

Their site is very easy to navigate, and everything is clearly laid out. They have “Photographic” prints, and “Fine Art” (Giclee) prints. The photographic prints are very affordable at $2.00 for an 8×10, while the Giclee are considerably more at $10 for an 8×10. However, there are no set-up fees, no minimum orders or any other bogus fees, and they do have discounts if you order more than one print. All the other Giclee printers I found charged at least $25 for one print, in addition to the setup cost. Even better, First Class shipping is only $3, and from what I can tell that’s for any size order!

Just to test out their quality and compare, I ordered:

• 4×6 Matte Photographic Print on Kodak Endura paper - $.30

• 4×6 Lustre Photographic Print on Kodak Endura paper - $.30

• 4×6 Giclee Art Print on Somerset Velvet paper - $5.00

The Service

I was immediately impressed by the fact that a real live person called me just to basically say “Hi” and make sure I didn’t have any questions or concerns. Maybe I’m just unlucky, but nobody ever does that for me! There weren’t even any hidden promotions involved– it seemed they just really wanted to make sure I was all set.

The shipping was also excellent. The site says it can take 3 business days to produce Giclee prints, but mine seemed to be on the way after only a day or two, and though I chose the cheapest shipping option, it took a total of 5 days from clicking “Order” to having them in my hand. The packaging was excellent. Everything was packed in a sturdy envelope with an additional sheet of cardboard backing, and the individial items were in their own protective envelopes with plenty of information about my prints attached. They even added a border to my image so it didn’t sit on the page funny (I had left it up to them to decide when I ordered) and wrote a letter explaining that they noticed I had an art print and they thought it would look nicest with a border. Compare that to Zazzle who apparently couldn’t even look at a calendar and tell what side was up before adding the spiral binding (grrr.. that’s another story!)

In ADDITION to this, they included a free sample pack and monitor calibration kit, to make sure my future prints matched their printers as closely as possible.

The Prints

Yes, yes, I know, finally to the important part! Well.. the prints are beautiful! Here’s what I thought of each.

Photographic Prints: The photographic prints caught my image’s colors perfectly. They were vibrant, crisp, and had none of that extreme contrast and saturation that laser prints tend to give. However, I really would recommend them for photographs, which is why it is called a “Photographic” print. The back of the paper is printed with the Kodak Endura logo, and it just doesn’t seem very artsy. The prints were lovely, but the photo paper didn’t feel very “natural” at all. Even the matte was fairly glossy, which I imagine would bring out the colors of a photograph beautifully. But I would not make my art prints with their Photographic Print service.

Giclee Prints: Now we’re talking! I have nothing bad to say about the Giclee print I ordered. I find it really hard to tell the different between this print and my original painting, even without using their calibration tool. It is printed on a watercolor-type paper (Somerset Velvet) and touching it feels like you are touching someone’s work of art. The colors are vivid without being overly saturated or contrast-y (heh), and they add a 1 inch border around the piece to either trim it how you like or to have a border for framing. By this I mean that my 4×6 print actually arrived on 6×8 paper. I took advantage of this by hand-tearing the border to give it a deckled watercolor edge, which adds to the artistic quality even more. Awesome!

In Conclusion…

I’m hooked! One could argue that those other Giclee printers have drum scanners, setup fees and high costs because it results in a better print, and perhaps they are right. But when I look at a print and can barely even tell the difference between it and my original, then that seems like fine enough quality to me. Any more would be splitting hairs, wouldn’t it? However, since they DON’T scan your image for you, it’s your responsibility to get a quality scan. If your scan sucks, then your print will–most likely–suck.

Since I can order one print at a time with no hassle besides uploading my image, I plan to order prints on demand as people purchase them from my Etsy shop. This way I won’t have to keep any inventory or break the bank, but people can still receive very high quality prints. Hoorah!

If you want to check them out: iprintfromhome.com

With a goal of expanding from Etsy and getting some more stuff into ShopSCAD, I’ve been taking a look at all the stuff I made and thinking what ShopSCAD might like to buy. My main interest is the little Kitty Girl dolls, but I realized that halving my Etsy price for that to fit with ShopSCAD’s doubling for their retail would not be worth the money. Therefore, I decide to make some dolls twice as big (13″ compared to 7″), with more detail and nice furry feet, and have the “mini” dolls be Etsy-only. Now that I have my prototype, it’s time to market it to ShopSCAD and see if they are interested! Wish me luck…

(Yeesh, I really need to get back to DRAWING soon!)

Etsy Shop is Live!

I’ve been working nonstop on getting my Etsy design and shop all set up, getting enough items to sell (didn’t want to open a shop with only two items…) and taking trips to Office Max to print, laminate, and cut all sorts o’ stuff (Thanks to Matt with his patience!) And yesterday I felt ready enough to start putting up items. It’s a lot more work than it seems like! I made a lightbox out of a cardboard carton and tissue paper, photographed a zillion items, and tried to perfect eye-catching descriptions for the item pages.

Luckily it’s already paid off! I got a nibble within an hour of posting, and then today someone bought one of my bookmarks! I can only hope the luck I had with a quick first sale sticks around.

Anyway, I’m having a ton of fun already just tweaking my new shop, and I highly recommend any artist or crafter to check Etsy out for your own shop! And of course I’d love if you came and visited mine. :} Here’s a link! http://jadefrolics.etsy.com

Well, I’m finally back in Savannah, which hopefully means more updating to my poor, neglected blog!

I spent the holidays in Florida and, having grown up in Michigan, stepping outside to 75 degrees and topless Europeans on the beach was a rather startling Christmas atmosphere. I had a great time though, and got to spend some quality time with my four siblings (Including the new one!)

Even on vacation I couldn’t stop thinking about neat stuff to make for my upcoming Etsy shop, so I took the opportunity to have a little craft-time with my siblings. I found some really neat tutorials on making glass magnets on the web, so I printed out a bunch of little bits of my artwork and we all made some sets of magnets out of them. Unfortunately they had to sit out for 24 hours to dry, and I forgot to take final shots! Ah well.

I was also lucky enough to receive an absolutely awesome Christmas/Graduation present…

TADA!!

Suh-weet. My old Inspiron 9300 was about to kick the bucket, not to mention that fact that it weighed a bazillion pounds and could barely run anything over Photoshop 7. My new Macbook Pro is beautiful, sleek and fast, and I’m trying my best to keep it that way. (I give myself a week before it gets cereal crumbs embedded in the keyboard…) I picked the 15″ version with 2 gigs of ram, but ordered 4 gigs online which I’m going to swap out and hopefully not ruin anything.

Anyway, there’s my life in a nutshell. Now that I’m back in Savannah I’m going to try to get back on track with promotion and opening an Etsy shop! Wish me luck!