One of the things I've always loved the most about being an artist is seeing my creation in print. I've been playing around with the online print on demand fabric shop Spoonflower for a while now but never actually took the leap and ordered swatches until last week. Spoonflower's policy is that in order to sell your designs on fabric, wallpaper or gift wrap you have to purchase a test swatch first to check colors, repeats and anything else that might not be noticed until the design is in print. I like this policy because it means people have to invest in their own designs before they are made available for other people to purchase, it's a nice layer of quality control.
Size difference: Gold file's resolution was 300 dpi and pink file was 150 dpi.
First time printing with Spoonflower!
After deciding it was time to invest in my designs and make them available for purchase I spent about two weeks perfecting the collection I planned to launch on Spoonflower. This collection is called Spring Wildflower and it's inspired the beauty I see popping up around me as the first wildflowers of the year begin to bloom. It comes in two color ways pink and gold. Both color ways can be found in my Spoonflower shop. I was extremely impressed when the sample swatches I ordered arrived. The colors are true to what I see on my screen and so is the size. The pink colorway is a little smaller than the gold and here's why: because this was my first experience with printing on spoon flower I wanted to compare sizes and differences in resolution. Spoonflower recommends uploading a file sized to 150 dpi because that's the resolution they print. I followed this advice and exported the pink color way from adobe illustrator at 150 dpi. For the gold color way I exported at 300 dpi. My 300 dpi files uploaded a little bigger than the 150 dpi but in print I think it actually came out crisper even though it shouldn't have made too much of a difference since Spoonflower prints at 150 dpi. I missed the size difference on the gold color way when I printed, had I caught it, I could have easily adjusted the size by selecting Spoonflower's option to make the design smaller. This would have printed both color ways at the same size. Now I know for next time but for this collection I plan to leave the gold color way as it is. I love the way they came out in the larger size and I wish I would have uploaded the pink in the larger size as well.
I'm working on finishing up my next collection and I'll share it as soon as I get the swatches ordered and approved so stay tuned!
