Making Digital Prints for Artists

1. Intro: Hello. I'm Evan. I tick. I'm a freelance artist and illustrator. Welcome to making prints at home. Learning how to make high quality prints of your original artwork is a great way to expand your income stream. It enables people who love your work but can't afford originals to invest in you, and it allows you to get your work to a wider audience. In this class, you learn everything you need to know about how to create your own high quality artist. Prince will go over what kind of set up you need for your studio. How to scan work. How did edit it digitally, how to set up your printer and your printer profiles on how to package your work and even a little bit of that had a market. Your work. In addition to teaching you how to set up your own print studio at home, I'll also give you options for outsourcing. So if you're not quite ready or not interested in setting up your own print studio, this class is still great for you. I'll teach you how to set up files and how to pick the right manufacturer printer toe work with. So you can get the most bang for your buck. My still share classes focus on how artists can diverse fire income streams to turn our artwork into a thriving and robust business. If you'd like to check out other ways, you can grow your business. Check out some of my classes on creating pleading cards, making stickers and manufacturing and amel pins. Make sure to hit. Follow if you'd like to keep up with my future classes on how to create passive portions of your business. 2. Studio set up: So first I'm going to show you my studio set up there is different variations on this, but it works for me. Right here in this little corner of my house is everything I need to create prints for my business. Please excuse the messy wires and the overly filled recycling bin. So I need my laptop. I need my scanner. I need my printer. And then one of things you have to refill is your printer, ANC's And another refillable item is the paper. So the one time investments are the computer, which, if you're watching still sure, you probably already have on the scanner and the printer. And then the investments that you'll need to continuously make are the inks and the papers . Okay, so now for the details about each item that you'll need, I use the Cannon Pro 100. It's a fantastic printer. You can get it for under $400. Sometimes they do special deals where they give you a bunch of ink or you get a rebate for like, $200. If you're if you're in a place in your business, we're needing to be cost conscious. Keep an eye out For that, I highly recommend the cannon per 100. But if you're more comfortable with Yepsen, there's obviously Epson printers that our justice high quality. I've had this printer for four years, and it's the little printer that could. It has printed hundreds of thousands of things. That being said, if you're in a place in your business where your printing every run is 1000 you know, if your numbers are that big, Congratulations. But also, this printer may not be enough for you. You may need to. If you're printing those high numbers anyway, it probably behooves you toe to outsource your printing. Otherwise, get a you know, professional or commercial level printer. My scanner is the Epson perfection. I did not comparison shop for scanners because this one was given to me for free. I'm so that's something that you're probably gonna want to comparison shop on that I'm a little less knowledgeable about. There's also the option of using your on your tablet or your iPhone and a scanning app to scan your images, and that is a great option if you're not ready to invest in a scanner. Yet, I find that the quality isn't quite there. There are some great classes on skill share about specifically how to scan with an iPhone. If if that's what you're looking for, definitely take a peek. So the biggest cost with printing is always gonna be these little guys. The inks. You can see that this ink is Canon branded my printers the cannon Pro 100 on the cannon. Inks are incredibly high quality. They are worth it. I tried using there's generic options, so every time I get a pack of canon inks all the colors, it costs about $120 significant. But it lasts a long time. There are generic options that cost anywhere between, like 20 and $50. Cannon, I believe, recommends that you don't use them. I think that if you use them and they leak on your printer, it actually voids the warranty of the printer. I'm not sure if there's an intellectual property issue like if Canon owns the copyright and other people aren't supposed to make the ANC's or if it's just that it's a quality issue in Canon realized that it messes up the printers too often. I've tried the inks. They're fine but they turned my really beautiful. They turned the prints from my really beautiful printer that could do high quality prints in tow, low quality prints. So for me, it's very much worth it to invest in the high quality inks, even though it is a significant cost that I have to factor in to my business and into you know what, how much I have to sell it. Print for Here's a little peek at what the inks look like inside of the printer. They actually are super cool. They have these little ships that communicate you know about the inks to the printer. So the other thing that you have Teoh keep refilling is your paper. There's lots of great options for paper out there. I really love Red River paper, so this is the paper that I ease. And the reason that I love Red River paper is because they give you on printer profile, so they give you downloadable files that you on like loaded your printer settings, which I'll show you in a little bit on. That communicates very clearly your printer. The details about the paper it's printed on that's really the trick. That's the difference between getting a good print and a great print on your computer and your printer are both incredible machines. They're super intelligent, but you have to help them speak to each other. You have to have your computer communicate to your printer what kind of paper it's printing on. Otherwise, it doesnt know if its glossy paper or of its Matt paper, if it's thick paper and the amount of ink on the weight dispenses it really effects what the print will look like based on the paper. So that's your supplies. Overview. There are so many different options. I've discovered these particular ones through trial and air and research on. I encourage you to read a bunch there so many forms online about on about printers, about inks, about papers. And if you don't like, if you don't feel super comfortable about it or you feel like not the most tech savvy person in the world, don't be intimidated by it. Some of the forms people tend to like to use, you know, like the industry language of the in language, and but once you really a while, you start to get used to it, and you feel more confident and less afraid on so you can take my advice. But I also really encourage you to learn more. 3. Prints paper size: another important thing to consider when starting the print portion of your business is what sizes are you going to print on? It's really important toe limit your sizes on Do like 2 to 3 different sizes. I print on three sizes. So eight by 10 11 by 14 and 13 by 19 All three of these sizes are not not size that you need to custom frame. You can just buy a generic frame and put them in. I always make a point of leaving white around the edges so people can put mats or they just put it in the frame. And that kind of mats it, um, it's important to limit your paper sizes because you have to buy packaging for all those different sizes. So that's like kind of logistical issue you. If you're selling in person, ever, you have to be able to display all those sizes, which need different size displays. And also it's a cost issue. So if you on this is something you'll see when you start to look, it supplies. If I buy um 10 of one paper, the cost per paper would often be something like $2 for paper where if I buy 100 papers, the cost was down to like 20 cents per paper. So if you are buying 10 different paper sizes, you probably at any given time are only gonna be a blow for to buy 10 or by the smaller amount. Whereas if you're focusing on just two or three sizes, you can buy them in bulk, and thus your cost per print goes down significantly so on. That increases your profit for your print. When you're figuring out your profit, you have to think about how much your packaging cost, how much your supplies cost all of those things. You have to kind of roll into it. So the the as high quality as you can keep with his low cost really maximizes your profit and and limiting your paper sizes is a really great way to do that. 4. Prints demo project: the example I'm gonna bring you through for this class is my best seller. So my best seller is my animal and flower alphabet print. This is my 13 by 19 size. I have it in 11 by 14 as well with the full alphabet. And for my eight by 10 size, I do individual letters. So, um, I've turned this art into a bunch of different products on through printmaking. So on the third product I offer with this is custom names. So if somebody just had a grandson named Ned, I would go into my digital files and I create a print with the narwhal, the elephant and the fernet so on. That's an option on my etc. So from creating, you know, this it was work to create all this art. But once I created it, I've been able to make a bunch of different products with it through printmaking on and through some print on demand stuff, which I will get to in another class. So these were some of the original artwork for this. It's better if you're going to shrink down or shrink up. It's always better to have your original work be. You know the biggest, because then you have the most details. If you shrink it down, the details keep really nice. Whereas if I had made my original art this size and then tried to bring it up, it wouldn't have worked out so well. One of the great things about digital editing is that I messed this up. My hands slipped when I was painting this ink. And if this was gonna be my whole artwork, I would've made me really sad. But because this was just the base that I was gonna put into my computer and edit for a digital piece, it's no big deal. I go in and I'll show you how to digitally at it out. You know, any mistakes or backgrounder those kinds of things. 5. Scanning: All right, let's get to scanning. So on our example, image will be this Z is for De Bretton, Xenia, because we have some particular issues to work on with it. And first up to scanning is opening your scanner bed. Um, mine I cleaned recently. But if you have any dust e behoove as you like, it's a good idea to on have a micro fiber towel and clean it off because that's just more stuff you're gonna have to edit out later if you don't do it now. So that extra moment of work will save you more work. Later, you put your image face down in your scanner and then you close your skin or bed. All right, we're gonna go up and search for scanner Epson scan. This is the program that will come with your scanner, maybe a different program, depending on your scanner. But it should work the same way on the right. We have the preview screens. That's the last thing I scanned over there. And when we preview over here on the left, it'll preview. We have put in now. So there's rz. All those little boxes are different sizes that I have created and scanned, and this dotted one is the one that I'm using now. So I'm adjusting it. So I'm just getting the information I need and I won't have toe, you know, edit all Thea other stuff out that I don't need, Um oops. Made a little too tight me back out. Just the information that I need. Okay, that looks good. So over here on the left, the document type is reflective, not film. Right on. Put on a document table. It's a photo, not a document. That means it's higher resolution were not scanning like a text document. 48 bit color is perfect. That's high resolution and 300 dots per inch for sure. Um, 300 is the smallest amount of dots prints you're gonna want to do a small amount of pixels for something that you want to print documents size and leaving it just as is. It's what I created with my dotted line. Target size is original, cause this is gonna be the file that we're actually using. Will select one start mask, but we'll leave the rest. The others you can use, but I prefer to do most. The editing in photo shop, we hit scan. Always take time to name your document in a way where you'll be able to find it easily later. It's just makes your life easier. So, um, if for something really big, I would usually do a tiff on those are bigger files and they take a little longer. So for now, I'm just gonna do a J peg, which is definitely big enough to print really high quality, and we will hit. Okay, You don't take a moment for your scanner toe work. Um, as I mentioned before, there's many different scanner option. So search around and find the one that's best for you, and it seems like cell phone scanning APS are getting better and better, but they're not quite at the level of the skin or yet. All right, so now that were scanned. We're going to quit absence can. And we will go over and open photo shop to start our on digital editing. There's options other than Photoshopped you can use that are free, like pick, slur on. And there's different things that come on the iPad. But photo shop is the industry standard and what I would recommend most Okay, see in the next video 6. Setting up Print Files: All right, here we are in photo shop up to file. I'm going to do new or command, and that will open a new document box. First, we're gonna make it a the paper the right size to print on. We're going to go on eat by 10 paper. Uh, so then we're gonna change Resolution 300 dp I or pixels prints. Just like we did with the image. Eight bit color is fine, and that should do it. So we'll name it later and we'll click. OK, and here we have our eight by 10 document. We're gonna go up to the ruler a top and click our mouths and dragged down and look on the right and drag it to about one inch. Do the same for the bottom. I like to just give myself a little sense. The borders thes lines won't print it all. There just guidelines. Here's another way. You can do it. Go to view and do new guide. We have vertical selected there, so we'll write one inch. This just lets me know, um, about where my border is, so I can sort of center the documents. I'll do it again if you knew Guide, and this time I'll write seven inches. So it'll be one inch from the right because the right it's a eight inches wide. Seven. Just said about one inch around the whole side. Now I'm gonna go to file police embedded for my image. You want to place it into the document rather than open it in a new document, and I'm going to select Z is for zebra. Now that's placed. I'm gonna need to hit enter to get it to really place in. There we go. And there we have my Z's for zebra. If you hit Z on, your keyboard will get this little confined glass where you consume them. Zoom out, but let's go over to the right. Now here on the layers panel background. You hit that little laki thing on the right and it'll unlock your background layers. So now when you hit the eyes, you can shut layers off and you see if you drag the layer that's above, it will go behind. When you drag it back up, it will be in front, so thes laters. Just work like layers and real life. So I'm leaving the background layer with the eye closed so I can just see the top layer. So what? I'm editing it. I won't get confused. I'm gonna go over to my left, my tools, and I'm gonna select the magic wand tool. You also just hit W on your keyboard. But there it is. On the left, you can just hit something a luxury it and it will select large area. Um, and if we hit, delete, there we go. It just disappears. That whole area it selected, it disappears. It selects, like pixels or similar pixels. So we're zooming in. We're hitting the to get our magnifying glass to really zoom in and see how well it did. So it leaves some areas where we need to clean up a bit more for sure. But actually the for or the hair on the zebra looks really nice. So depending on what kind of image you have magic want Wilken work really well. So to zoom in and out, you're hitting Z onto Zoom out. You're just holding down option. So we're gonna magic wand told that big area out to it. Seems like magic want was working for the big areas, but stuff like this. That's kind of scraggly. It's not going toe work. We're gonna go over here to the lasso tool, which is right above Magic Wand Tool, and we're selecting polygon ALS. I find that one the easiest and you can resuming in Z on your keyboard. To me in you can just click it, and it's a straight line to each place you click it, and when you double click it, it closes the loop and we just hit, delete and get rid of everything within that box. So again, hitting Z to zoom in a bit more onto that zebra paw and we're using polygon allowed to every time I click, it will stay to that area. So I'm clicking, clicking around to get that shape of that pond, not cut anything off that I want going back around and closing the loop. That's the other way. You can either double click. You can close that loop with that little circle appears, and you can hit the leak. So again, using the polygonal lasso tool to clean up these little areas, delete again using the polygonal lasso tool. So this is the most effective tool to me. The magic wand tool saves a lot of time, but the lasso tool and in particular, the polygonal lasso tool is, um is like surgical. You can go in and do exactly what you need on just take your time, uh, and get get everything you need. Okay, I'm gonna speed up the video here. I'm just doing more of the same with the polygonal lasso tool and you can see when I drag a massive sort of drag it to a different area of the document, uh, more probably Donald getting all these little areas. And it's really important to be this close to your document to do this to really zoom in and take your time. Because otherwise all these little pieces that I'm getting out now you won't see when you're zoomed out, but they will show up in your print. So though I love the polygonal lasso tool, it's not the only way We're gonna go to the eraser now. So I'm gonna hit E for a racer where it's over there on the left, you can see in the tools, but he is the short cut and the brackets, the left and right brackets. If you get left. It'll make that smaller, and if you get right, it'll make it bigger. So I made the eraser smaller, or you go up to the top there and adjust the size that way, so erasing it is another way to do it. And sometimes it lines are really curvy. The polygonal lasso tool can be a little too, you know, sharper, angular eso. Sometimes if you have a steady hand using the erasers or great way to clean things up a bit , so I'm going back to the polygonal lasso tool you can see I'm doing the same exact thing as I'm doing with the lasso tool, as I am with the Eraser. So, um, you'll notice I'm working maybe a little bit faster with the lasso tool because it's just what's comfortable for me. So that's sort of the thing about Photoshopped. There's a 1,000,000 different ways you can use this program for me. I is probably about like 10 of the tools, and it works perfectly for editing my images. Then there's people. There's photographers who use it, Um, who do totally different things with it. So you just learn what you need to learn with it. Don't think that you need to learn all the photo shop I'm usually magic. Want will again to get big areas. I don't think you need to learn everything. Just want a few little things Learned how to open a document. Um learn how to like what you need to know to edit the kinds of images you do. Um, so there's loads of classes on skill share about photo shop. This is just enough of an intro here. Amusing the eraser again, um, to, like, help you open it and get into it. And as I mentioned before, photo shop is kind of expensive. You may or may not have access to it, and there's other options. If you have the iPad pro you can use, the program is not intended for it. But you can use procreate, um, to a race out backgrounds and stuff like that. Um, you can also use free online programs such as Pick Slur, which is really modeled off of photo shop. It's very similar to photo shop, Um, and they have a lot of online tutorials that are super helpful. Um, it's not quite as powerful as voters up, Of course, but pixel er should work for, um, for just about any purposes for for ending illustration worker artwork. Um, okay, so I think I'll I'll do, Ah, I'll speed it up for the rest of it, since you generally get the idea here. All right, now the videos extra speedy, but you can see I'm still zooming in and really taking my time. Those little things may or may not be super noticeable when we zoomed out, but it's usually worth it usually just makes it look more need and put together to really take your time to get rid of those extra little pixels that the magic wand tool couldn't handle for us. Even those little blurry bits will just increase the sharpness and level of professionalism of your image. Uh, let's see. That should do it. For now. It's maybe a little bit more off that Z, since that's Inc painted It's not a straight line, so I can straighten it out a little bit if I want get the at the smudge. Of course, I need to get that off right. Cleaning up that See, that looks good to me. So we're gonna, uh, actually zoom out I selected the magnifying glass all over on the left. You can also just hit, see and hold down Option. And I'm gonna put the background back on so we can see what it looks like with the white background, which is what it will look like on paper getting Z and then clicking to zoom back. And again, that looks pretty good to me. Now, the last thing I want to check is if it iss centered. So it looks like maybe it's ladies to the left. So I'm clicking my move, tool or V and I'm moving it a little bit to the right, A little bit up. That looks good to me. Okay, great. Were centered on. And now we're ready to print. So I'm gonna go to file or command p was like print. And here is our print, uh, dialog box. So, uh, can in pro 100 on the WiFi that my printer and on selecting print settings There we go. So, cop, it's one. The paper is eight by tens. I'm selecting that paper above and we go, I don't need borderless cause I have a border eight by 10. And now I'm gonna go slightly out, but I'm actually gonna go down to Quality and Media Select Matt Photo paper. The next video I'll talk about, um, printer profiles and paper. But you can see now that I'm selecting for that, um, and then always high. Always print quality high for putting something quick. You can click standard, but for a finished product, you always wanna have high, so we'll save that. And, um now for the color handing photo shop managed colors. But the printer profiles of Martin Most important, so for this again in the next video talk about Red River paper. But I've downloaded this printer profile Are are polar mats, a Red River paper. It's specific to the exact exact paper that I'm going to use, and that's the most important thing when printing. So have selected that, and I'm gonna say print and we're all ready to go 7. Printing and Printer Profiles: so we're just about ready to print. We're going to printing on this eight by 10 Red River paper. It's a polar matt paper. All the different sizes I printed print on are the same paper that used the same color profiles, so that makes it like a little easier for me. So I don't have to switch it all the time every time I find something. So whether you use Red River paper or a cannon paper or in Epson paper, another high quality paper on The most important thing is that the paper you use offers printer profiles, so the printer profile information is the settings that you're gonna put in your printer. Sometimes there's a downloadable component on that will, like, really help your computer communicate with your printer. You should have that information on the box or on a sheet, my printers talking to me or on a sheet in your box so every Red River paper when you open it should have the sheet with information about how you go about using this paper, and it's important to take a few minutes to read it. So right down here it says printer, caller profiles and color management, and it gives you a website to go to as well as sorry used to a website. To go to Israel is really clear instructions on how to install the printer profiles. I'm not gonna do that in this class because it depends on which paper you're using. Which printer profiles. You're using those kinds of things, but I will tell you that you should Onley only only use a paper that will offer you either downloadable printer profiles or we'll tell you what to select in your print dialog box to create the highest quality prints on and red rivers, the when I can vouch for So when you open your box of paper, I can speak for Red River paper. Specifically, there will usually be a piece of cardboard just because humidity can make the paper warp, so that helps it stay straight. And if the paper warps at all, you'll have trouble printing it. That's where you get printer jams and those kinds of things, so the cider printing on most printer paper is on Lee. You know you can only print on one side when it's a high quality paper like this, and that is the side that's facing up. It's really funny because people always like, Oh, it's the smooth side. I can't really feel the difference. So I have to just be really careful to make sure I take my paper out the right way and put it in the right way because I always am wrong When I think I figured out the smooth side so on and take this paper like this in here, I'll bring you over with me to our printer. What group? To our printer. And with this side facing up still, I'm gonna put it right into our printer. I'm gonna slide at so it puts in and I will close this top. If I don't close this top my printer won't print now is gonna make sure it's on gonna tell it that there is peeper and will send the file to print so you can see that the printer works pretty slowly because it's getting the high quality print. So you need to make sure that if you have a project, do that's like a big project on and you're using this printer, you need to leave time for it. I'm Teoh to make sure you can have it done in time so you can really see how slowly it's printing. I'm going to speed this video up so you can watch the whole printing on in a way that it won't take very long. So here we go. So here is our print, and you can see how beautiful and high quality it is because of our printer profiles. And I'm just really quickly going to grab out the original from our scanner, and you can see I had seen how similar they are on. We just did our digital editing to get out all these little blurs and mistakes in it. But it's essentially the same image and were able to get from that one painting that took a lot of time, were able to get so many different pieces from it that are still of really high quality. And that's what's so wonderful about being able to print your artwork. 8. Outsourcing Printing: So now that you've set up your print files, you can choose to either put them yourself at your home printer in the studio set up that I showed you, or you can choose to send them to a manufacturer to have them printed. So if you are going to send your prints out to be printed on the manufacturer, that I would recommend is smart press. I've had things parted with them for a variety of reasons. I usually do my prints at home, but sometimes I want to do really big prints, and my printer can't handle past 14 inches wide. So if I want to do a print that's 24 inches wide after ship it out, I've also used smart press when I need to do bulk orders of greeting cards. It's just too much for my printer to handle on, and I've been really happy with all their work and their customer service. I'm not affiliated with the many in any way, like I don't have a stake in it. It's just my best recommendation to you. That being said, look around, ask around, read about it. There are many different options, and it's just about finding the one that's the best fit for you when it comes to working with a printer. The higher volume you can do so the more prince you can do, the better price you're gonna get per print. Uh, that can be so ugh. Ultimately, that you have to put more money up front. Getting 1000 prints of something if you're able to sell all of them is way more favorable to your profit margin than two only by 10 of one print. The reason that I really like smart press is that you can set it up so that you can dio get the price for 1000 prints. But you can do within that 1000. They'll allow you to do different designs. So you're getting the price deal for 1000 prints, but you're doing 100 of 10 different prints. I know artists who prefer to work with the local printers so that they could go in person toe. Look at proofs on, and I know there's another artist who gets even near locally to me, who gets a better deal on working with a local printer because she's built a relationship with him and he so he'll give her, like, really good deals because he knows that she'll be doing 1000 prints this week. And then when she asked print cards next week, she's also gonna come to him. So where is online? I think my, um when I do my greeting cards in bulk, I get them for, like, under 40 cents per card on. I think she gets it, like under 30 cents per card. But that's a relationship that she's built over years of the person recognising on that she's going to continuous business for him. So that's always something to consider. And it is nice because you can go in and check on things, whereas if you're working with an online printer to get a proof, you have to pay extra, have it sent to you. So I usually do digital proofs after I've worked with a company long enough to understand that they are creating things in a high quality on the reason that I recommend smart press is because there's if I've been rushed in setting up my print files and I, you know, left something that was supposed to be edited out, their printers actually will look closely at your files, and I've gotten messages after them saying, Are you sure that you meant to leave this like this color thing in the background, or do you want to send us a new file? But that saved me a lot of money. So that's why I highly recommend that there's other options which I'm not gonna get into in this class. I'm gonna deal with it in a future class because it's very broad is print on demand. So there's companies where you can upload your works to their website, and if someone orders a print, they will print it on demand. So if someone goes on to X your, however you sell whatever stores and they say, Oh, I want this print. That company will get a notification and they will print the print and ship that customer for you. Your profit margins, in that case are way lower, but you don't have to worry about buying supplies. There's pros and cons, which again, I just wanted to make you aware that that's an option if you weren't aware of it. But it's not something I'm gonna get into in depth right now. 9. Prints packaging: packaging is crucial for all products on you. Might have a great product, but it's not packaged. Well, then it is probably not gonna sell. So what does it mean to package something? Well, first of all, it means that it will keep the product safe from point A to point B, so that might be your selling at a market. Um, and someone needs to put in a bag and keep it from for the print, Keep it from bending, were getting wet or whatever on their way home. That also might mean that you are shipping it. So the way I practice package my products, they're safe enough to just put in an envelope in ship War toe hands it off to someone to take. They also look good enough that they would appeal toe wholesalers toe plate in their stores . Um, it's also important that your packaging is branded that someone can look quickly at it and understand that you made it. I'm to package. There's one more important part. Keeping your packaging equal friendly is good business because it's something that people care about more and more. And there's even some markets and stores that won't carry things that are packaged with plastic or packaged in a way that is not eco friendly. And even more importantly, plastic is important and packaging, but also a huge environmental problem. And it's just best Teoh not to it. There's also great options now for eco friendly packaging. There are plastics made out of they're plant based plastics and they biodegrade, so if they get thrown away, they will disappear. They won't be there forever. There's also plastics that are recyclable, but a lot of places don't have the capacity to recycle plastic bags. So just keep that in mind. I buy all my packaging materials from clear bags dot com on There are many options. So again, I encourage you to research your bags. Works for me because they ego friendly options, plant based plastics. They have all the sizes I need that I can get in one place, and I they deliver on time. I you know, I trust them. I built a relationship with them on their prices are a little high for me, especially their shipping prices. So that's something to consider. Let's see, so to package you need your backing board to keep it safe from bending. You need your, um, celo sleeve to keep it from getting wet or getting anything on it. And you want a brand it. So the way I brand mine is a stamp with my business name, my name and my website. It's just a little stamp that I bought from Zazzle when they were having a stamp sale on a little rubber stamp. And you can get whatever color thank you. Want and stamp it sometimes. Also, just throw a business card in. I know people who choose to create, like a slip or a piece of paper that they slip in that has more information about their business. Maybe they're artists bio. It sort of depends on how your branding yourself, uhm and how and like, how much you want to communicate and you'll figure out what's right for you. You can try different things. So first I take my cell Oh, sleep. And I put my board in it with the branding in the back. What? Then I take my print, so I dig my print and I slide that on him on actually ripped this off earlier, but you rip off the covering for the gluey bit and then you, well, it over and press it down really nicely and neatly. And there you have a professionally packaged print wala. 10. Sales: There's many different ways to go about selling your prints. There's retail and wholesale those air kind of to the big categories. Wholesale means you're selling them to others, to stores to sell them for you and in that case, you to sell them at half the price that they would retail horse so that the store owner can also make a profit on and then the others retail where you are selling direct customer either online or in person. I do a mix of retail and wholesale for my business. For retail, I sell at local markets. I live in ST Petersburg, Florida, and it's beautiful all year round, except for like a couple months in the summer when it gets too hot and there's a really thriving, like local market seen. So that has been very important for my business. Um, I also sell on Etsy year round and for wholesale I sell on etc. Wholesale. It's another part of that. You have to apply for where wholesale clients can come and see your work and buy it, and I also sell wholesale on a website called Indigo Fair again, where you apply to it and they take a percentage. I think they take between 15 and 18% of whatever you sell, which may seem like a lot, but it's actually not because they're doing the work to get the clients for you. Something else that I see a lot of artists doing is using social media to sell their work. I'll see people post originals or prints on instagram and say DME for this print. I think a lot of people like to buy that way because they feel like a connection to the artist. It's like a kind of a special thing. But I like to also have an option where people can just go and see the prices and see the differences without necessarily contacting me, because there's a lot of different personality types out there. There's some people who are more shy on some people who would want to engage with you personally more. And it's, I think, smart have options for both something else that's very important to consider what sales is who is your audience. So it might be that you, your body of work, all has a specific audience in mind. Or it might be that, like different, different styles different kinds of work. If you have different people in mind on this has got variety of implications for sales. One is if you're selling on instagram and social media, how you're gonna hash tag it. You'll need to use the hash tags that your ideal clients or the right fit clients for your work would be looking at, UM, four xz tags are also a really important thing on theirs. Tons of classes on school share about that. If you're trying to start a pure at scene, you want to learn more about that. In my experience, the most important thing in etc is getting found in the search started the most important thing about after having a good body of work and good photographs and stuff like that that comes first. But second you have to get found so using the right tags in your work so that the etc algorithm will show the right people. Your work, um, for wholesale on knowing your audience is really important because you have to convince the story or the wholesaler that your work is good for their clients. You have not only understand your own, uh, you know who your own target audiences. You have to figure out where they're gonna buy stuff. So I'm gonna take you through a few of my prints and talk to you about how I go about selling those specific prints and how I sort of target the audience for them. As I mentioned before, I live in a community that really values local art on in ST Petersburg, Florida We call it ST Pete. So on I identified like a local market. People were always asking if I had mermaids, and there's like a lot of pride in the city. So I thought, I want to make something that celebrates a city that people would want to have in their houses That could be kind of like recognizable with my brand in the city. So I have a series of different mermaids, but this is one of my best selling ones, the ST Pete Mermaid kind of dancing around with seaweed. So for this, I approached local stores, and this is being carried in stickers and prints and cards and some local stores. And it's also something that people actually come to market specifically to see me to get a lot of my work is actually sort of childlike and geared towards fantasy and playfulness on . And when I tried, like, night markets or more adult places, it still sells, but not quite as well. So I wanted to develop things that were a little more targeted towards adult imagination. And so I have these paintings which do really well when I do night markets or type of these prints that you really want to do night markets on and like music, conflict music, conference concerts and festivals and those kinds of things. This one is one of my best sellers for concert, so you can see it has, like, a similar thing to the rest. My work. It still fits in my brand in that it's like floral and coming from nature on and all about imagination. But it's a little more adult, so it's good to have range in your work. Sometimes also good to have, like a really tight categories. People know you add the blank artist, and every time they need a like they know he was like the baby gift artist. And so every time there's a baby born that they come to you, so there's you can think about your business in different ways. I personally get so excited about doing different kinds of things that I want to stay away from being the this artist on. But I've also had gotten the advice from people that that's better. So that's your path that you'll figure out this piece, which is from like a book that I'm working on. I mean, little intricacies, this one on cells. Most moved and it sells when kids see it. So I always have this kid level. This is something that Children they see they get really wrapped up in it and they kind of run up to it. And look at this. Look at that. Look at this and I always keep smaller prints of it, too. In case the parents, like either don't have the funds were like, aren't gonna buy it because I like to. When kids get excited about it, I like to you on, like reward that or encourage it and also sometimes give it like giving a gift is good for your business. Anyway, it makes people remember you and think of you. But so this one is really like the kid tested mother approved I guess. Like it's kids who sell this one for me by getting excited about it. So I think about that when I set my work up for display. This is another piece from a book that I'm working on about dragons and unicorns and mermaids and this one cells actually want. And its sister prints from the same story, this one. The's sell a lot online, and I actually generally have better luck song prints in person than I do online. But the tags for these ones really work cause I tag them for nursery. So, like a lot of people will when they are having a baby, they'll be really excited in the wanna create a nursery with a theme, and I'm noticing that a lot of people are doing like fantasy nurseries. So like unicorns and dragons and those kinds of things on. And the 1st 2 cells I made of these prints, you know either Chad with the person or they sent me a message or whatever, and they said, I'm so excited to decorate my baby's nursery with ease. So then I changed all my tags on etc. To being specific toe like fantasy baby nursery on so you can. Also, you can sort of evolved, uh, with how you go about selling your work based on how you see people responding to it. So and we also have my alphabet and flower animal prints, which were what I use is an example throughout this class. These prints I they sell really well at markets in person when people can, like, see them and touch them, and they also sell them wholesale. So my intention for them, which is how they worked really well, is for nurseries that people often buy them for new baby gifts or for, like young Children's birthday parties. And they also do sometimes sell for adults and teenagers. And that's kind of things. But their primary on the primary audience is for babies. I'm they also sell wholesale. There are a lot of stores that specifically focus on this market of on of little babies, and I did the national stationery show last year, which was a really great way to move my business more. The wholesale. It's a it's a show that's in New York, where on big retailers from all over country chains and little stores alike come to find stationery greeting cards, but you can also sell some prints at it. So I have a few clients that order these. And what's really great about that is that these prints are the wholesale price is $10 each , and because they're doing the whole out of that, it's a set. It's a really big sale for me when when people purchase the's, that's really great. I also realized in thinking about the market for these, which is your special gifts for little babies. Uh, I thought about how I could make them custom, which I mentioned in the I mention in the beginning when I was talking about how I used these. But I also want to mention it during sales because, especially if you're gonna use etc. And also, if you're going to social media, it's really exciting for people to to get something like really custom and special for people. So here's what I put in the market so people can see. Here's some examples country this I have this. So at markets, people know that they can order it in person, and then I'll ship it to them on the next, like the next Monday or whatever after the market. So I was planned time in my schedule to do that. So pretty is so on. That's really important also when you notice that something is like go with what's working with sales. So I identified that this Siris was working really well for babies, and I was thinking about what people want to give to a new child who's just coming into this world, something that's really special. And let's that baby, no, they're special, and maybe they'll even see it when they're older on and feel like, Oh, this person really love me. They got me this special night on I'm not not to get too much into the like the philosophy of gift giving, but on I. So I made an adjustment, and I turned it into something that could really be customizable. So be open with your prints and the way that we've gone about it in this class. We're creating artwork and then scanning it in, and then you can alter it digitally, even if you are primarily like a hand on artists. Being able to serve shift things digitally really opens up what you can do and allows you to be flexible with work and not have to start from square one. So that is That's what I have to say about sales. If you have any specific questions, if you have a piece of work that you're like, what's the Who's the audience for this? I've developed those skills, but I'm happy if you wanna, you know, sharing in the Projects gallery to give you some advice about you know who you might want to market it to in what space might be good for you to share that work with the world. 11. Conclusion: thanks so much for taking my class. If you found it useful, please leave a review. If you think that there's anything else I need to add or anything else you'd like to know, please write me a message about it or posting discussions, and I'll be happy to answer any questions. If you'd like to get in touch with me, I am Fox and pro paper. Go on Instagram and I'm super accessible. You can send me a message or coming on my work and you'll hear back for me. I'm so excited to see what you create and how you expand your business Using print. Don't forget to check out my other classes on creating reading cards, making enamel pins and printing stickers at home. Also, stay tuned for future classes on how to create passive portions of your income through using print on demand websites. If you'd like to check out my other classes or see future classes, don't forget to hit. Follow again. Thank you so much for taking this class. I wish you the best