Printing My Artwork
(Currently (2024), I am not actively submitting items for print, but will leave this blog here for information - and I may look into doing it again in the future)
As people may be aware, another arm to my site is original and printed artwork. I'm dabbling in a number of print fulfilment options (Printful, Society6 and Redbubble), as they all offer a different range of products, but Printful is the site that I tend to use most because it's linked directly to my TicTail web store. It's also the cheapest I've found so far, so that saving can be passed on to the customer.
Though it generally involves more work than you'd think to get an image of the right quality, especially with acrylic pours that need canvas texture removing, colour balance correcting and large scans or photographs to meet the exacting requirements to enable images to replicate well on clothes, accessories and household items, it is immensely satisfying (and fun) to see the mock-ups of finished products carrying your artwork.
I find it particularly useful for fluid art, as some potential clients may struggle with abstract work on their walls, but the organic patterns created by fluid paint lend themselves particularly well to fabric and product decoration.
For anyone unfamiliar with this business model, you upload your artwork to the fulfilment site, design and (in some cases) price the work. Once you've submitted these, the company fulfils the orders directly and prints on demand, so it enables artists to offer prints and products carrying their work without the organisation, financial outlay and storage issues of having them printed themselves, including the risks of over-ordering a product that doesn't sell. Obviously, a large share of the sale price goes to the print company, but balanced by the lack of risk of over-ordering, this can be an attractive means of offering your designs on a wide range of products. Many of them offer reduced rates for bulk ordering of an item, so you can stock up on items to carry on your stall at a craft or art fair, which can then be offered at a more attractive rate to customers who buy from you directly.
It's certainly not a "get rich quick" scheme - I'm still waiting to make a first sale on this type of product, and selling through the sites' own search engines puts you up against millions of others also competing for the business, but if you have the means to market your work independently, establish a following and can build a large portfolio of images, there is the potential to add a useful extra arm to the hand-crafter's/artist's business.