Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Zandiepants Zazzles

Your shop name *
Zandiepants Zazzles
Zazzle to me is a... *
Part time job I would like to make a full time job
What is the best advice you have received from a fellow shopkeeper about your shops or designs you would like to pass on to another shopkeeper? *

There are a few things that have made a great difference for me. One of them is to put designs on a variety of products. When I started Zazzle I would mainly make greeting cards, not really thinking that those designs would fit on anything else. After reading the advice to be broader then one products (one of those 'duh why didn't I do that?!' moments) I simply tried if it would work on other products. I found that I wasn't always able to use the whole greeting card design, but I could definitly make elements of the cards work on buttons, magnets, mugs etc. I'm sure it helps that I work mostly in Adobe Illustrator so it's easy to only use a few elements of a design.

What PODs do u currently use or have shops on? *
  • Zazzle
  • Cafepress
What did you do with your free time before zazzle or other POD's....and what do you do with it now? *
Ever since I've discovered Adobe Illustrator a good portion of my free time has gone to making things in there. That has remained the same, with the difference that if my tries, doodles and experiments turn out well, I can actually use them on PODs. So in the end a lot of my free time still qualifies as working on PODs lol. Other then that I love arts and crafts, love making cards with paper and rubber stamps, I love how I can get lost in a craft project and time just flies by. Going to museums and watching movies are other favorites.
What programs do you use to make your designs *
  • Photoshop (any version)
  • Illustrator
  • Other raster software
Tell us more about what you like and do not like about each software you use, what makes it special. *

As mentioned before Adobe Illustrator is by far my favorite software to use. I must admit that I hated it at first, but after a serious crash course it became my favorite. I'm not as good as I would like to be at drawing by hand, but taking my sketches into illustrator allows me to tweak the lines indefinitely until I'm either happy with it or think "that's good enough" (otherwise I'd spend days on one design, which does happen on occasion lol). I like taking my vectors (which come out of illustrator) to photoshop to give them some textures, something that is much easier to do in photoshop.

A while ago I bought Flame Painter, a wonderful program that allows me to just zone out and come up with abstracts (although I'm in the process of learning to use it in different ways), I take those files to photoshop and make kaleidoscopes / circular designs out of them.

Will you make custom orders? *
Yes - sometimes free, sometimes fee required upfront
Elaborate on your answer above regarding custom orders... *
I haven't gotten many custom orders on POD sites yet. I do custom orders as a graphic designer and sending them directly to a printer, those require at least partial pay up front. For POD sites I do custom orders but I might price them higher if it's so specific that I can't sell them again. It greatly depends on the request.
List your shop URL's *


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