(This is a loooong post. Good to read if you’re looking for a fine art printer or masochistic!)

As I said in my earlier post– I ordered an Epson R2880 to start making prints of my own. I’m definitely still going to order from iprintfromhome as well (they use the same inkset and paper as I am) but I wanted to be able to make archival, museum-quality prints on demand. The printer arrived earlier this month and I’ve had some time to test it out.  I must say: IT’S AMAAAAAZING!

I ordered it refurbished because it was a LOT less expensive, Epson guarantees their quality, and will replace it if something doesn’t work. It arrived with absolutely no scratches or blemishes to show that it’s a refurb, and was just like new.

It was easy to set up and I was ready to work on making a print about an hour after opening the box. This printer made stunning prints straight out of the box, but I did end up purchasing a monitor calibrator since my screen was way off for printing. I won’t go into what calibrator you should buy (I’m not an expert), but I will say that this is a vital part of professional printing to get your monitor colors accurate.

I bought the Spyder3 Express Calibrator which worked great after some trial and error, and for paper I purchased Epson Watercolor Radiant White paper for test prints (it’s thinner at 190 gsm and is wood pulp, not cotton) and the more expensive Epson Velvet Fine Art paper for final prints (thick at 260 gsm, 100% cotton and totally archival) which produces the most beautiful textured and rich prints I’ve seen so far.

I wish I could accurately show how nice the prints look, but all I have are bad photographs. In any case, you can see the depth of color and the great texture of these prints– in person you really can’t tell that they are not my originals without a magnifying glass!

I am no kind of expert when it comes to printing, so I can’t write up an educated review… But I have been doing a ton of research about what people look for in prints and I can describe my experience for anyone else thinking about purchasing a printer for artwork.

Choosing a Printer

Basically, my needs for a printer were this:

• It needed to use pigment inks, which are much more stable than dye ink
• It needed to print 13×19″
• It needed to handle thick matte fine art paper
• The color print quality needed to be freaking awesome and professional (which means it would probably use at least 8 inks to capture all those colors)
• It needed to not be absolutely enormous

I did some research within the Canon, HP, and Epson brands. My initial list that seemed to have many of these features looked like this:

• HP Photosmart Pro B9180
• Canon Pixma Pro9500
• Epson R1900
• Epson R2880
• Epson R3800

Some quick research showed me that the Epson R1900 was not what I wanted– it is an excellent printer, but aimed toward glossy printing and unable to handle heavy fine art paper well. Good. One down!

Next, I ruled out the Epson R3800 (kind of a larger 2880) because it’s crazy big and prints up to 17″.  It was also too expesnsive. I hesitated a bit, because the R3800 has ink cartridges so large that it ships with over $500 worth of ink, but space is an issue and I did not want to go crazy. I can always order 17″ prints online if I need.

Deciding between the rest was more difficult. The Canon Pixma 9500, HP B9180 and Epson R2880 all seemed to be great printers, with fans of each. Each could print the same size with at least 8 archival pigment inks. Each had different pros and cons. I eventually decided on the Epson R2880 because it definitely had equal-to-better reviews in terms of print quality, it’s smaller and faster than the HP and Canon, the Ultrachrome K3 inks are drooled over, it can use one of highest reviewed fine art papers (Epson Velvet), and the main complaint for it–the fact that you have to waste ink swapping black cartridges for glossy vs. matte paper–wasn’t an issue since I will never use glossy paper anyway. It uses the same inkset/paper as they use at iPrintFromHome, so I already knew the prints would look awesome.

The Canon and HP did feature larger ink catridges (Epson’s are ridiculously small… another con) but since I am not yet a high-volume printer, I was not too worried about this. Basically, the Canon and HP didn’t have any outstanding positives to outweigh the Epson.

If you’re an artist like me looking for a high quality printer, all the ones I listed would be great. I chose the R2880 because it had the qualities I needed, but the others might be perfect for someone else! Just make sure the printer uses archival inks and can handle archival paper, so that your customers will have prints that last for decades.

I wrote a post a while ago about using Lulu to create a children’s book dummy. I was really pleased with the quality and affordability of my dummy book, so I’ve gone to Lulu for another project.

Chronicle Books is my favorite independent book publisher, and the third Monday of each month they are open for full portfolio reviews. I’ve been meaning to apply for months now, but I didn’t want to send in the usual Itoya black portfolio with letter-sized printouts. I love Itoya– just wanted a change, y’know? I decided to use Lulu.com again with the same options I chose for my dummy book. I set up this portfolio layout in InDesign, and ordered the book last week. It arrived pretty quickly!

I’m really happy with the quality of my new printed portfolio, and I’ll have no qualms about sending it in to Chronicle. I only wish I could swap out images when I have updates without ordering a whole new book!

If you’re interested in making your own portfolio book at Lulu, for reference I chose the paperback perfect-bound option in an 8.5″ square. I think the glue of perfect-binding looks a lot nicer than the stapled books. (And it costs the same.) You have to have at least 32 pages for perfect binding, but I found that using mostly one image per spread (16-20 illustrations) made the book flow nicely and not appear cluttered.

P.S. My printer arrived as scheduled and is AMAZING! I’ve been testing it out and will write more about it soon. Hooray!

Since moving to Florida, my whole workin’-on-stuff schedule has been totally out of whack– including my blog, of course! (Man, please don’t let this blog become one of those blogs whose only entries consist of “Sorry for not writing, teehee!!!”)

I (Actually, my dad) did succeed in solving a long-time frustration regarding the name “Jadefrolics,” though! Years back I was dumb enough to let jadefrolics.com expire, after which a domain hoarding company immediately snatched it up and started using it for random ad garbage. Rather than going into the whole boring story, the good news is that my dad signed up for an expired domain-grabbing company himself and got it back! Now  jadefrolics.com is mine again (it will have to be pried form my cold, dead appendages) so I’d like to ask anyone who is linking to the site from jadefrolics.net / blog.jadefrolics.net to update their links to jadefrolics.com / blog.jadefrolics.com! Woohoo!

I also tweaked my logo a bit, just to make it a bit more polished. I didn’t like the irises and position of the eyes in the old logo, and I thought the eyelashes were too garbled when shrunk. I’ve given it some slight changes and just general editing.

Old Logo (Above)

New Logo (Above)

I’ve also been delighted with the shiny-candy icons the Mac uses, so for fun I decided to make a shiny cat in Illustrator. While looking for inspiration on logos I found this awesome tutorial on how to recreate the Firefox logo, which is really fun to read about– though it uses Photoshop rather than Illustrator.

My last update for the site so far was to create a commission request form, so potential clients could give good, organized information and also to weed out serious requests from, er, not so serious ones ;). I used JotForm.com for this and integrated it into the site. It was really easy to do, if anyone else is looking for a form builder to stop spam and keep organized!

I hope I don’t sound like a salesman now, but iPrintfromhome is starting up an ongoing promotion for new customers. Unfortunately I already have an account, so I can’t grab the $10, but their giclee prints are seriously pretty amazing so anyone who hasn’t tried them out will have no reason not to with this new promo!

They’re offering a $10 starting credit for any new customers who sign up and write “Tweet - Referrer’s_Name” in the “Referred by” box. Hopefully you’d be kind enough to put my name, if you’re checking out the promotion here! So, when you sign up, just write “Tweet- Jade Nellans” in the referral box and you should be all set with your $10. (I think they might manually add the $ to your account though, so give it some time!)

This is awesome, because $10 will pay for a 4×6 Giclee print AND shipping, so you can easily check out whether you love the quality without spending anything.

You can read my review of them here. If you want to try it out, feel free to sign up!

It’s been a few weeks now since sending out my most recent mailers, and since I have not received any bites yet I am getting increasingly antsy and wanting to expand into some other means of marketing. I know a few weeks isn’t a lot when it comes to getting responses from promo cards, but that– combined with the fact that I never received anything from my cards in December (and that the only response I ever got from my dummy book was one rejection)– is just a little disheartening. I don’t want to sit around sulking though, so I’m considering some other avenues for promotion.

My goal until now has been to spend as little as possible on marketing, simply because I don’t have a bunch of $ floating around, but I am finally understanding the whole “you have to spend money to make money” thing and I’d like to try it out with a paid portfolio site (not right now, but in the semi-near future when I feel my portfolio is as strong as it can be). The trouble is finding sites that are actually worth it. It seems better to spend more on a successful site, then spend less on a site nobody goes to, but I am having trouble finding out which ones those are. There are so many! I’m listing the ones I’ve seen… let me know if you’ve heard of any other promising ones!

The I Spot - I heard a lot about The I Spot during college, with professors (don’t remember which) saying that once you can afford it it’s important to get there because everyone goes there, and every big illustrator has a portfolio there. When I checked out the site, though, I found it to be extremely lacking in the navigation area. I wanted to test how easy it was to find images, so I decided to put some terms into the search box. When I searched “cat,” I got 0 results. Seriously. Whaaaaat? So I searched “animal” and again got 0 results. I honestly thought I must have been doing something wrong. Next I searched “woman” with 0 results, and I was further confused. When I started typing “people,” though, a little box came up under the search bar that offered to finish the word for me. With that search I got over 5000 results. After a while more of tinkering, I learned how the I Spot handled search, and that it was completely counter-intuitive. It appears that what they have is like 25 keywords which you can use to label your images. If someone happens to search for one of these 25 keywords, they get results. If you search for the other zillions of words in the english language, though, you get absolutely no results. How does this make any sense? If you only have an option of 25 or so keywords to look through, why is there is a search bar at all? Why not just categories you can click?

I can’t imagine how anyone would ever find my work over someone else’s, with such a horrible labeling and search system. I can’t picture myself spending $750 to be on such a poorly designed site, unless all the art directors already know something I don’t about searching The I Spot. If anyone reading this has a portfolio there, please, let me know if you get jobs from it! I’m really wary from what I’ve seen, even with the rave reviews of my professor.

The other sites I am looking at are ChildrensIllustrators.com, Picture-Book.com, Altpick.com, and FolioPlanet.com. But how on earth do you determine which one art directors go to most? The only thing they seem to have in common is being expensive.

I know this is something I want to do fairly soon, but with the cost and the risk it’s hard to make a choice. I know that just one good project would pay for the whole year of hosting at these sites, but which ones actually get you projects?

I’m thinking about waiting a bit to take the plunge on sites SO costly, and starting out with one of the less expensive, but still paid, sites. I’ve got a few nibbles from my free Creative Hotlist portfolio, and for $70 a year they offer better stuff (like actual pictures) and improved search ranking. They are run by Communication Arts, so people trust them, and it might be a good place to start.

If any of you guys are paid members of ANY portfolio site, I’d love to hear your thoughts about whether it’s been worth it! This stuff is so overwhelming.

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In other news, I ordered some awesome rounded postcards from OvernightPrints.com to use as notecards to sell. I used the coupon code BC100 to get $10 off the order, so it was super cheap. If any of you guys need to order your summer mailers or business cards or something, these postcards came out amazing. They are really thick, and the satin matte finish is gorgeous. Also, rounded corners = automatic awesome. I have more on the way of 5 or so different art pieces, and I think I’ll be back for my next promo mailers, too. I’ll be selling them here, and at the Market Bazaar!

Finally got these off my boyfriend’s camera! Just a few pics of my setup. The Savannah market Bazaar was a great success! I made a good profit as well as passing out lots of cards and making some new friends.

This month, though, I am going to try to get a spot that’s NOT under a tree! Not only did a bird poop on one of my prints, but those annoying balls of pollen kept falling all over EVERYTHING. Even so, it was a lot of fun. I’ll be back there Saurday, May 9th, so come check it out!

The state of my poor display in the pictures is less than optimal… it was WINDY and dolls and prints were flying everywhere. I eventually had to tape everything down. :I

I started up a MySoti account to sell t-shirts. Stay tuned for more designs!

Check out the designs here!

My completed Spring promo postcard for the children’s market. I’m happy with it!

Paul brought over his awesome new promo postcard the other day, and it inspired me to get to work on mine. The last children’s postcards I sent had slight innuendo of adult things in them which may or may not turn off an art director, so my goal this time was to just have a fun postcard without anything being murdered, had sex with, full of breasts, etc. I am hoping the toilets and dung beetles and hairballs are acceptable. Here’s the ink.

Ok, slight venting ahead: A huge problem for me lately is trying to figure out what might appeal to art directors in the Editorial Magazine market (for adults.) I keep feeling like I have to make a postcard of some sterile boring guy in a business suit, and while I know this is not true I have no idea WHAT to produce. All my stuff seems to be a “style” that appeals to kids, even when everything in it is naked or violent. I am trying to work on being able to draw cute animals and all the weird things I like and making it appeal to the Art Directors of magazines for adults. Aya Kakeda does this fabulously! I originally made Bathtime for Medusa to put on a card, so I may still use it for this next card, but I was trying to come up with some other ideas too, that were more conceptual and actually fit a common topic in magazines– and I just totally drew a blank. Do any of you guys have trouble with certain venues of illustration that you still really want to tap into?  :end venting:

Finally, the Creatures Great and Small show is tonight at 6 the 180 Center– check it out! I know Anna has some work in there, and when I dropped off my stuff I saw some awesome paintings and plush so it should be a good time.

In this post I’ll document how I got 100 Postcards, 50 Large postcards, 250 Business cards, and 25 magnets for $10.39.

Many of you probably are aware of Vistaprint– either for its notorious free business cards or its even more notorious habit of tricking its customers into signing up for sketchy and expensive “Rewards” programs. I, too had heard this, and stayed away from Vistaprint thus far out of fear. However, after receiving a $25 Visa credit/gift card from Wachovia’s referral program, I thought it would be the perfect chance to try out Vistaprint’s wide array of free products and deals. Can’t get to my bank account through a gift card, after all! So, I’m in no way saying Vistaprint is a good, reputable company. But if you wanna take the risk you can get a bunch of stuff for cheap!

Vistaprint has a plethora of deals running at any one time, and I did some hunting to find the absolute best coupon. You can always find their “free items” promo, but the catch is that they charge you $5.00 to upload your own image (though after the first fee it’s free to use the image.) Eventually, though, I discovered a golden link to free uploads AND products: Check it out here. Can’t guarantee how long it will be there, as it came in an e-mail.

I took advantage of this to get 100 postcards, 50 large postcards, 250 business cards and 25 magnets for my Etsy shop. I plan to leave the postcards around at businesses, etc. and slip the magnets into Etsy orders. The total came to $10.39– the price for shipping. There are a bunch of other free things you can get but I didn’t need ‘em. This would be great for your illustration marketing materials, too! I plan on using it next time I do a mailer.

The checkout process for Vistaprint IS crazy and overwhelming. The secret is to just read EVERYTHING and NEVER click on anything “extra” they offer you (Especially the $10 off your next order link. This signs you up for their scammy rewards program.) Make sure no unneeded checkboxes are checked, and at the end of your order do NOT click the “Continue” button that says in small print something about a special offer. It was actually kinda fun avoiding all the spam mines. You also might consider using an email address other than your main one, if you don’t want to look at their offers all the time. Next time I order from them I might post a walkthrough with screenshots: “How to order from Vistaprint without getting screwed.”

Anyway, I got the products and they are all fine quality except the magnets are a little junky and thin. But for the price, you can’t beat it (If you’re careful)!