Week 8 Blog Entry: w/c 9th November 2020 - Creative Enterprise

This week, I decided that instead of using Instantprint to create my cards I'm going to use a company called Demon Print in Stafford. In my business proposal, I mentioned that I wanted to use Instantprint because they were the only company who use materials that I want for my cards, which was the 'gold dust' material. This gives the cards a shiny, golden sheen that I thought would be perfect for the festive period. Initially, I was going to print 50 cards for £45.00, but I then realised that that price only reflects one design, rather than the three that I mentioned in my proposal. I doubled checked the pricing for three designs and I decided that I might go for 25 of each design, which would have cost me £105.00 all together. I didn't mind paying this price, because that's approximately £1.40 per card and I could have sold mine for around £2.50-£3.00 and still made a profit. After presenting my proposal in front of the class and telling them what I was planning on buying, I was told by my peers that there is a printers in Stafford that print 25 cards for £5.00. Although they don't have a range of materials to print on, from what I can see on their website, the cards look good in regards to their quality. I think that even though the 'Gold Dust' would have looked really nice in theory, I'm not sure how it would have worked with my designs and the abstract. I think it might be best that I play it safe and spend a lot less, than spend more and the cards not look right.

This week, I had a one-to-one with my lecturer where I showed all of the work I've been doing over half-term. I showed her the images that I've created, using bokeh and light trials. She liked the images I had produced, particularly the one where I had adjusted the hue to show neon colours rather than the typical primary colours. She made a good point about the colour schemes of some of my images being too different, combining primary and neon colours together. If I were to sell these together in a pack, there wouldn't be any consistency. When I looked at packs of cards where I work, I've always noticed that there is a certain theme with each design that's in the pack - this could be the colour schemes, the style of a drawing, the types of subject, etc. This has prompted me to look into doing another shoot where I use different coloured tinsel for my abstract Christmas tree and creating more edits in post-production. I'll be looking at creating some more light trials with the Christmas lights and make something a bit 'neater' or 'tidier' than what I've got so far. Rather than creating random lines with the light trails, I'll attempt to create something that resembles something festive or doesn't look as random.

Another thing she mentioned was the fact that I now need to look into doing something more with my outcomes. I've struggled to come up with anything here, as my abstract already looks quite complex and adding anything else to it would make the card look too messy. Although I've experimented with sewing into card and I really liked the effect, it isn't going to suit the theme of my cards. I do quite like the idea of gold foil for the lettering on the front of the card. This is too expensive to get printed through companies like Instantprint, so I've looked into how I can do it myself. Firstly, I looked into getting a Cricut machine and these cost £179.00. I asked my lecturer if we had anything like this at college, but was told they don't and was advised that a Cricut machine is difficult to use. In that case for now, I'm going to attempt to create the gold foil effect manually, as I've found a YouTube video that shows a very simple process of how you do it. I will definietly consider a Cricut in the future, especially when I start making a number of cards for my business. Hopefully, it was give me a unique selling point.

To do the gold foil technique, I need to buy a stamp with the words "Merry Christmas" on it. I can get these from Etsy from between £3.00-£4.00 each. I would brush some glue onto the stamp and place it on the card in the place of where I want my text. I then place the gold foil gold side-up onto the area where the glue is. I then press it down and make sure it's stuck onto the card. I'll turn the card over to press over the back and make sure it's stuck on well. I then peel away the foil and it should leave the text. I'm really keen to try this technique, as I have never done this before so it'll be a challenge for me. It's also something different and adds to the value of the card, whilst not being too intricate that it either detracts attention away from the main imagery or makes the card look too messy. On Thursday, I bought some glue and gold foil for £8.00 from Hobbycraft and a 'Merry Christmas' stamp from Etsy for £4.00. I struggled between choosing between two different types of stamp (cursive font or a blocky, more modern font), so I asked a family member who is the target market for these cards. He said that the blocky font looked more modern and would fit in with the modern aesthetic of the abstract, whereas the other font looked more traditional.

I got in touch with Demon Print on Thursday to see if they could accomodate 152mm x 152mm cards (square). I requested envelopes and I asked about the turnaround for making the cards and the delivery costs. It's going to cost around 23p for each card (around £6 for 25) and for three designs, that'll be £18 and £8 for delivery. Turnaround is 1-2 days. I think this is a really good price and turnaround and it's definitely a lot cheaper than what I was originally going for with Instantprint.

Next week, I'll be doing another shoot based on the feedback I got from my one-to-one. I intend to create two collections of images - one that uses primary colours and another that uses more neon and Pop-Arty colours. I will then present these infront of the class using mock-ups of my cards, to see which images people prefer. I will also put one image from each collection on Instagram to see what colour schemes people prefer. I'm going to try gold foiling the text to see if it's something that I could do on the real thing and I'm also going to attempt cutting a star shape out of the top of the abstract Christmas tree cards and use gold card to fill in the cut out shape. I'll be using Photoshop to place text on the image if the gold foil doesn't work. I hope to be pretty much complete by the end of next week and ready to start getting my cards sent out to print. After that, I can start focusing on how I'm going to market my products to a large, online audience.