How I Print my Own Products From Home | Art Prints, Greeting Cards, Gift Tags | Epson ET-8500

hi everyone and welcome back to my channel if you're new here I'm Shannon and I'm a pet porer and Wildlife artist and I specialize in colored pencils and for the past few years I have been creating artwork of animals building up a collection of designs and then putting them onto my own products such as greeting cards prints gift tags bookmarks all that kind of stuff and more recently I have been starting my own home printing Journey which I have been sharing here on YouTube so I now print most of the products for myself and I've had all sorts of emails and messages asking about everything to do with the printing process whether that's the software that I use to set the documents up the paper that I use the print settings that I use all that kind of stuff I am going to clear up in this video so hopefully it should be nice and informative and it'll help you to understand the printing process a little bit more so we're going to get quite technical I'm going to share as much as I can with you please bear in mind that I'm not an expert on printing I am just somebody that has used a lot of trial and error to figure this out for themselves so let's get into it okay so the printer that I use is the Epson Eco tank ET 8500 which is just there and I'm not an expert on printers by any means but my lovely Patron who follows along with my jwing tutorials hi Steph if you're watching recommended this printer to me I had a little bit of a research looked into different models just to compare and I did end up going with this one this one in particular that I've got prints up to A4 which is all that I needed really I only planned on doing like greeting cards and small prints and anything bigger I would probably just Outsource to a printing company I don't really have the space for anything bigger than that to be honest I don't live in the biggest of houses at the minute so that was also a deciding factor on which printer I got it's not the cheapest of printers but to be honest in comparison to a lot of other printers out there it's actually very reasonable and it offers really good value for money because of how inexpensive it is to run and how cheap the inks are so one of the main benefits of the Eco tank models is that the inks are supposed to last a really long time I've had mine for quite a few months now like I said and the inks have barely gone down and I've still got loads of leftover ink in the bottles in storage so I don't think I'll need to purchase anymore for a while but when I do I think it's only like £50 or something for a full set I might be wrong don't quote me on that but I think that's how much it is but yeah if you're looking for a larger printer than this and you want to print up to A3 consider the Epson Eco tank 8550 which is the exact same printer as this it's just a little bit bigger I really like this printer and I would recommend it so before I started printing all of my own greeting cards I used to use printed.com which is a website here in the UK and you can buy all sorts of printed goods from like bookmarks to greeting cards to notepads and stuff like that and the quality is always really nice they're really quick to process your order buying cards from a company like this served me really well to begin with when I wasn't quite sure if the cards were going to be popular if they'd even sell and I didn't want to go investing in something like a printer before I knew if it was a wise decision however the only problem when buying from companies like this is it's very expensive to purchase the products unless you're buying in absolutely enormous quantities with hundreds of thousands of products so you're going to be paying a premium to make a small order because it makes no difference to them whether you buy 20 cards or 2,000 cards the setup and the time it takes to load the documents up is pretty much the same I imagine they just leave the machine to do the work so yeah the manual labor is the same either way pretty much so that's why it's so expensive for small businesses like us just to buy a small quantity of cards it was costing me more than a p P for each individual card with the envelope and the sleeve included so when I was selling on Etsy for like £375 Allin delivery packaging the card itself I was barely making any money on it and sometimes I probably lost money on it so it wasn't worth doing for me I kind of had to make a decision to print from home or just give up on the online shop but I didn't want to give up on it I really wanted to try and expand my shop and put more of my designs out there that I couldn't really put out before because I was buying such small quantities of like 20 cards in five designs every time that I did an order and now because I print from home I can pretty much print to order rather than doing a whole load of bulk items at once so if somebody orders a greeting card from me on the day that I'm putting the order together I just print it out make it and it's good to go so it is really wise to test the waters and see if there's a demand for your product before you go investing in the equipment to like do it yourself you've got to accept you probably won't make money from it straight away but at least you're not losing money by investing in the equipment but yeah now I can make my cards for a fraction of the price that I made them for before I'll show you where I get all my envelopes and stuff like that from as well I really liked the card stock that I used to get which is called the Tinto gesso card and I actually managed to find it online so that I could use it at home and print out on it myself so it's got a light hammmer effect and it's like a bit of a creamy off-white color and I use the 300 GSM one as it's really nice and sturdy and it feels really high quality I'll make sure to link everything that I mentioned in this video down below by the way so my envelopes I get from envelopes UK they're just Square plain craft envelopes and the compostable sleeves I get from cell Express they've got an Etsy and Amazon and they've got their own website as well so yeah I just prefer to go with the more eco-friendly option for my shop if I can help it so they're a little bit more pricey than the plastic ones but for me it is worth the extra money for my fine art prints I use a different paper just because I wanted to use something that was like intended for art prints rather than just like stationery and stuff like that although you probably could use the Tinto gesso for art prints if you wanted to keep it simple but yeah the one that I use is the Epson Fine Art cotton textured natural paper and it's really good it's a bit warmer than the Tinto gesso it has a very similar texture and it's supposed to be archival quality so that's the key difference here and the reason why I wanted to use a different paper you don't have to use these two same papers that I use you can have a look and see what else is out there I have tried hammered card from Amazon and I didn't really get on with it very well there are probably cheaper options and more expensive options so it's just a case of personal preference and your art style to be honest because if you're doing photography maybe this isn't the right sort of paper for you and you need something with a little bit more of like a shine a gloss to it but yeah have a look and see what there is out there so the software that I use to design all of my products I use this for pretty much everything to be honest is Affinity photo which is a alternative to Adobe Photoshop it does a lot of the same things as Photoshop but it's a fraction of the price it's like A50 oneoff payment rather than 20 a month or over2 200 oneoff for Photoshop it's an no-brainer really it's more than enough for Designing greeting cards and stuff like that to be honest I do not miss Photoshop one bit I really don't notice much of a difference using this the only downside is there aren't that many tutorials out there for Affinity photo in comparison to photoshop so that's kind of why I'm making this video because I know myself that there's not a lot of videos out there there like this so hopefully this will help you I've just moved you onto my screen so that I can show you exactly how I create my print sheets that I like to call them so this is an A4 sheet and at the top here we've got the greeting card so this is the back this is the front and I've got a little line down the middle just to separate it so that when we print it out we can score it down there fold it in half and then it's a greeting card and then at the bottom here I have a little bit of extra room which I use for my gift tags so that I'm not wasting any space I'm going to show you exactly how I created this from scratch and we're going to work on another Square card like this you can do A5 A6 cards you know the rectangle ones but I personally just prefer the square ones because when I've got them all presented side by side at my craft pH they look nice and consistent so first things first we want to go to file at the top click new and you want want to select A4 which is just here and then if you go to the right this is where you can see the measurements so 210 mm by 297 and we want to make sure that that DPI is turned right up to 400 which is the highest that it can go that just means that we can ensure we'll get the best quality print possible and yeah I like to make sure it is set to millim for this and landscape and then here I just want to untick trans arent background so that we get a nice white background on our document so I'm going to select create there we go so we've got a nice blank document to work with so if I go back to this one here we need to make this sort of rectangle here to indicate where the greeting card is going to be so like I said I like to do the square greeting cards and basically you want to figure out the measurement of the full length of the card which is the full width of A4 so that is 297 mm now if you divide that by two you basically going to get the measurement of each side of the greeting card so we're going to draw a rectangle to indicate where that's going to be so you want to make sure you've selected the rectangle tool and I'm going to get rid of the fill and what you can do is you can just start to draw a rectangle it doesn't matter if it's not the perfect size because down here at the bottom we're going to put in the right measurements so like I said it's 297 divide that by two is and 48.5 specifically that means the height of this rectangle is going to be the height of the cord and I do want to make sure that we've got a bit of a stroke on it so if you go here where it says stroke if you put something like one then you can see where that is just make sure it's Central by clicking on this little bit up here okay so we now have where our greeting card is going to go okay now we've got our rectangle to indicate where the full width of the card is we need to start to add the back and the front of the card in now the easiest way that I've found to do this is to actually create a whole new document just for the back of the card so for example here I've created a document where I can add my logo my site whatever information it is that you want to add to the back of the card and because it's on a separate document when you go to align that into the center it goes exactly where it needs to be so I just thought I'd show you why you need to create the separate document if you tried to align the logo on this print sheet if you go to align center it's just going to go to the center of the whole thing whereas we need it to be at the center of the back of the greeting card we're going to do that now we're going to create a new document so file new and this time we're going to do some of our own measurements so like I said half of the width of the A4 sheet of paper is 148.5 so we're going to make a square we're going to do 148.5 now if you're doing a different size greeting card this back area of the card needs to be the size of your greeting card at the back so just do a little measure and see what size it needs to be but yes 400 DPI going to create that there we go so we now have the back of the card and what I like to do now is just add another rectangle in just it'll make it easier for us when we copy all this information over to our print sheet we're going to make it the size of the document so just make sure down here at the right is the right size going to make sure it's Central there we go and then on here you can just add any information that you want to add so I'm going to put my logo on my website because that's pretty much all I have on it so I'm just going to pop them in there always make sure that when you're moving something you have that layer selected here so for example if I want to move my logo I'm going to make sure that that is selected and then if you've got each element exactly where you want them it's a good idea to then group these layers and then you can align them properly otherwise if you don't group the layers and you go to align them they're going to go like that they're going to move so yeah you want to make sure they group then once you have your information for the back of the card all you have to do is Select these two layers so the rectangle that we drew around the edge the logo information whatnot probably a good idea to group those together as well so that is all one big group now you're going to copy that over so on a Mac it's command C copy you do want to make sure actually that that doesn't have any fill we go so we're going to copy that over to this document and paste it on you might need to just move it down a little bit but there we have the back of the card so now we've done this for the back we can save that document we can save that document as card back for example okay okay now if we resave that as card Front we now have two separate documents that we can keep forever and just alter as and when we need to so this is now going to be the front of the card so I'm going to get rid of that logo we don't need that anymore so we're essentially going to do this we're going to add our artwork create the front of the card so just insert your artwork this is my sort of raw artwork without any editing I have got a lot of videos on how to scan artwork so if you have no idea how to do that I'll link them below make it a little bit bigger Ary doy now we have this group here which includes our artwork for the front of the card and that rectangle just so that we can see where it's going so copy that over onto our print sheet by the way just ignore all this extra stuff on here I'm just going to delete that it's just where the edges of my scand artwork are so we're going to move this over to the front of the card you don't have to do the front of the card separately if you don't want if it's easier for you feel free to just plunk it straight onto the sheet just going to tidy the just going to make sure it's in the right place there we go right so we now have our artwork there we've got the back of our card there so what we're going to do now to create the crease line is we're going to go to the penol which is is this one here this little arrow just keep hold of that drag it along to the pencil and you want to hold down the shift button while clicking at the top and clicking at the bottom so that creates a nice little line for us there and I do like to make sure there's a stroke for this so got to stroke and I'm actually going to make it a paler color because when we print this out we don't want it to be super strong we're going to be scoring over it and we kind of want the line to disappear so I'm going to make it so that we can just about see it with a nice pale gray color going to turn that strut down and make it a little bit thinner let's do not4 maybe even a little bit lighter actually thinner let's see not one there we go so if I zoom in that's a really really Fain line oh I didn't tidy my heart work up very well so going to click that that line and just align it to the center you might need to have a play around and move the artwork a little bit more if it's not quite in the right place yeah there we go as you can see my artwork's looking a little bit pale so if I go into the group there I can actually add a layer of adjustments to make that color a bit better so so you can either do this on the print document or you can do it on the separate document here let talk up to you but I'll just show you some of the things that I do to tweak the colors if you go to layer at the top new adjustment layer I always like to turn down the levels so just drag that down a little bit it's going to be a case of trial and error with this you'll probably print it out multiple times until you get it right just like tweak it a little bit here and there going to go to layer again new adjustment layer brightness and contrast I usually turn the brightness up a little bit turn the contrast up a little bit and then layer again new adjustment layer color balance this is all the sort of stuff that you'll figure out once you start printing I usually have to make it warmer because my Epson printer prints out quite cool so these are the usual adjustments that I make but yeah like I said that's all very dependent on what your artwork is what your printer is all that kind of stuff your scanner so that's my card pretty much done now you can make this line a little bit thinner if you want feel free to make it a bit thinner it's up to you um but now the card's done it's time to add the gift tags feel free to save the document for the print sheet as well at this stage Call It Whatever You Like just so that you don't lose everything that you've done and now we're going to create the gift tags at at the bottom obviously this is only relevant if you want to do gift tags but I do the exact same process pretty much for the gift tags where I create a new document just for the tag itself and then I actually create a second document for the print section just because I have a lot of different gift Tag sets so when I want to copy one onto a greeting card I can just stick it on the bottom and print whatever gift tag set I want so what we need to figure out now is how we fit four greeting cards into this bottom space so we're basically going to measure that bottom area so if we draw another rectangle we can see how much space we've got there so we've got obviously the full length of the paper and we've got and we've got about 60.8 mm he to work with so the gift tags need to be less than that widthwise because they're going to obviously go on this side all the way down here so I'm going to do my gift tags 50 mm by 70 mm each and that should be perfect for fitting all four of them there so we're going to create a new document again so file new and we're going to do 50 by 70 there we go create so this will be our gift tags so if we go to this rect angle here and go to ellipse tool you've just got to hold down the mouse and just click and then hold down on shift and draw a little circle that should be about right make sure it's Central and just move it to wherever you feel looks right that's where we'll be hole punching the paper to add the little ribbon through so I'm just going to make sure there is a little stroke so that we can see it make that as thin or as thick as you want and then we're going to do another rectangle around the edge just so that when we go to copy it over to our print section and print sheet we can move the whole thing so needs to be 50 by 72 going to put that behind the ellipse so that we can see it make sure it's Central in the right place and then it's just a case of copying your artwork over again there we go so that is the work that I'm going to add just move it into place and just put it underneath that ellipse and then I'm going to do some adjustment layers obviously do whatever you feel necessary I would spend a little bit more time on this when I'm doing it properly this is just to show you for an example I like to do different adjustment layers for the gift tags and the greeting cards just because sometimes they need slightly different different alterations sometimes I do the Vibrance a little bit if it's looking a bit dull saturation but yeah anyway that is done and going to group those layers again now that our first gift tag is done and ready to go I want to create yet another document which will be around about this size and it's where we're going to paste all of our gift tags into just making it easier for ourselves in future if we want to switch out the gift tag set on the print sheet document I do that when I need to print a certain gift tag set and I might as well just do it on the greeting card that I need to print out at the time so hopefully that makes sense so we're going to create a new document that is around about the size of the gift tag section so we're going to go to file new again and like I said before it was the width of the A4 sheet so 2 97 and it was was it 60 we'll do 2 65 just to make sure that we've got enough space so now we're going to go back to our gift tag and what I like to do here I don't know if this is like the right way to do it but it just makes it a little bit easier for me I select all of the layers and I go to merge visible so right click on them merge visible and that kind of just I think it flattens the layer a little bit but because it's only a small section it doesn't really make a difference and it just creates this one layer with everything in it that can't be moved around or taken apart and it just means that when we now copy and paste that onto our print section document it's not faffy there's not loads of layers in it it's one image and I'm just going to rotate that pop it in there and I do like to add a little bit of a stroke to the outside of the gift tag too otherwise we're not going to know where to cut it out so if you make sure you selected that layer go to effects here there's all sorts of different things you can do to that image now but we just want to go on the outline and I'm going to do a really thin outline not point4 that's what I usually do so now that has the thinnest little outline there and we'll be able to see where to cut that out so you just repeat that process again three more times and you'll have a full set of gift tags obviously you just want to make sure that you line them all up you can like zoom in just make sure they're all lined up like that until you have a full set that you're happy with and that you can then copy and paste onto your print sheet at the bottom so just put them in place there we go and that is how I create my A4 print sheets okay now that I've shown you how to do the whole document setup I'm going to show you the print settings that I use to print out my print sheets so if you go to file and print and then make sure the correct printer is selected so I've got my Epson ET 8500 and I'll just go to my Tinto gesso settings so once you've figured out the settings that are working for you you can then save that as a preset with the name of the paper or whatever you want to call it so that you can easily just reselect that every time you print something on that paper so here I use A4 borderless which is important otherwise you're going to get a white border around the edge now the only thing with doing the borderless printing on my Epson et8 500 is that it slightly scales everything and makes it bigger than it should be so I've actually had to tweak my print documents and make the greeting card a little tiny bit smaller than we made it today in this tutorial but that is very specific to my printer I don't know if all of the printers do do that or if it's just mine but it's really annoying and it's unfortunately something that I've just had to work around so whether that's something that affects you I don't know but yeah I do click borderless there and then here we've got a drop- down menu with loads of different settings so for rine scale entire document I have it set to shrink to principal and automatic and then document layout I just single bleed and Mars I don't really have anything selected there layout yeah one n color matching I have this selected to color Sync here automatic whenever I've tried this the Epson color controls the colors have gone wild so yeah I just keep it on this one paper handling just got all pages automatic no cover page and then this is the important one print settings so here you can select whether you want the paper to go into the rear paper feeder or cassette two which is the little paper tray underneath the printer whenever I used to use cassette 2 the paper would get jammed a lot more easily so I've learned now from my own mistakes to use the rear paper feeder and for some reason you get the best print quality on the Tinto gesso card when you select plain paper/ bright white paper I've tried all of these and none of them work as well as this one the colors again they just seem to go wild when I use the other ones and then this is very important you need to select best quality for print quality and then expansion just got it set to Mid so yeah this is the issue that I have it does increase the size I wonder if I could ever play around with that one day two-sided printing off and then this is just showing the supply levels of my ink which have barely gone down so yeah that is the print settings that I use for the tineta gesso card oh and by the way if you did want to save a preset for your settings you're happy with them and you want to save them for future if you go on presets and use last used settings and then save current settings as preset and you can type in whatever you want so like I don't know A4 Jesso whatever you want for a final demonstration I'm going to show you the print settings that I use for the Epson Fine Art cotton natural textured paper that I use for prints so this is just one of my miniature 6x 6in prints and I'm going to go to file print and I'll select my Epson fine art paper preset so it's pretty much the exact same settings apart from on print settings I use media type velvet fite paper this doesn't work very well with the plain paper setting and because it is more of a fite paper this setting just seems to work really well so high quality there's only one option there so that is the only difference really with the Epsom fite paper so you can then just go ahead and save that as another preset hope that helps and that is pretty much it for how I print my own products from home keep in mind that whatever printer you've got it's going to take a little bit of trial and error to get those settings right you've just got to persevere and not expect the first few prints to be perfect as you can see here though the print quality is beautiful once you man to figure it [Music] out once my print sheet is done I use this really cheap Guillotine from Amazon to cut everything up then I use this scoring Guillotine that I also got from Amazon to do the little crease fold I really hope that this video was helpful if it was then I'd really appreciate if you gave it a like because it really helps this channel out subscribe to see more videos like this and I shall hopefully see you in another one bye for [Music] now

Channel: Shannon Mullin

Views: 16,782

Keywords: how to make art prints, how to make greeting cards, how to make gift tags, how to print, how to print from home, how to print your own prints, how to print your own products, print settings, printing, printers, epson, epson ET-8500, art prints, art business, how to make cards

Id: 4oAdvTgwDzc

Length: 30min 5sec (1805 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2023