Over the past few months, as well as working on a few commissions and developing the pack of cards, I’ve also be silently working towards re-opening my online store, mostly to allow people to enjoy the pack of cards, however also to try peruse the merchandise side of my illustration career... This has included a lot of smaller jobs and a rather scary amount of finical investment, all to try and ensure sales all run smoothly and customers get the best service. It’s taken quite a while, but very shortly I’m hoping for it all to pay off. - I also recently moved house! Which took more than its fair share of investment and time away from my work.
The main investment, was finally splashing out on my own high quality printer! Which is very exciting as I can now provide my customers with any print they would like, on a one-off scale, without having the worry about left over stock if it doesn’t sell too well. This also came with a lot of trail and error of different card-stocks, but fortunately I found what feels like the perfect paper that allows me to print a very high quality, colour rich, any size up to A3+!
If any fellow artists are interested, the printer and paper I went for are:
Canon PIXMA iP8750
KOALA Double Sided Matte Inkjet Photo Paper 230gs
The image above shows my new house set up along with my lovely new printer!
The other smaller investments were pretty much all packaging related. Due to a few quality/posting issues last time, I wanted to ensure I always have enough hardback envelopes in all sizes so that no prints get damaged in the post. Environmental impact is also super important to me so I’ve oped for complexly plastic-free and recyclable packaging. This includes, Jiffy bags for the cards, hardback envelopes for the prints and tissue paper, paper stickers and some fresh business cards to make it all bit more exciting to open! I hope to make a ‘pack an order with me’ real in the near future to bring a attention to these added touches, and of course… more content woo…
I have finally re-opened my shop here on my website and hopefully soon I’ll be making an Etsy and even have a few places (locally in Bristol) where I can sell my work in person! This is to try expand my audience a little as I feel currently restricted to people that are already aware of my work. - Stay tuned for updates on this, but for now enjoy the few updates to my online store!