DIY Prints help needed!

[PegBessie]

I would like to make my own prints of my art work, I am as ever on a budget so must keep costs low but produce good quality prints.
excuse my ignorance please but!....
what is giclee?
archival prints?
what ink, what paper do you recommend?
as i have said before I have little money to outlay for this project.
thanks in advance for any suggestions!

[Former_Member]

@Bessie- have you gotten any answers to your questions? I would love to know!

[SippinSnazzy]

I don't know much but glicee prints are high quality prints that a gallery can create for you, I think they scan your canvas. Very expensive. I use art.com for prints, the paper is pretty thick, costs are reasonable. it's also a matte finish. You should take a good pic of your work and upload it to their site and you can order an 8x10 print for 4.99. Plus, if you sell prints, you can just take the order and have them ship direct to the customer. I didn't get feedback, only have 2 sales so I don't know how the customers liked them but I don't mark up that much. Some people even use Walgreens to do prints and then you can just pick them up and ship to your customer also. Hope this helps!

[Former_Member]

https://www.etsy.com/listing/159269475/original-8-x-12-film-photograph-print?ref=shop_home_active

Printed at Adorama - they are really really reliable and love the quality

[EarthChildArt]

I'd like to know about prints too!
I sell eco friendly jewelry, but I just listed some of my art on my page too and I'm just selling them as originals, but maybe I should switch to prints.

[Former_Member]

Christina Dudycz from DreamyWalls says

if you sell prints, you can just take the order and have them ship direct to the customer -

Christina may not realize that this is against Etsy policy. We are not allowed to drop ship. I wish we could. However, it's best to review your prints before shipping directly to your clients.

AspenCreekPhoto.com has good prices and variety of papers.

[StudioKWN]

I have my giclee prints done at a local printer. you should shop around and get prices and also get samples of their work. I print on both canvas and paper and I like to be able to walk into a brick and mortar shop where I can select the paper and canvas myself and also quality check my prints before I send them to buyers rather than printing online. almost all print shops that do photo printing are now doing giclee prints as well

[Former_Member]

Kmye-chan (https://www.etsy.com/shop/kmye) specializes in giclee prints. At one point on her deviantart page she put together a very, VERY in depth and useful tutorial on producing Giclee prints. Personally I have never produced these types of prints, but as to my understanding these are the types you would produce only as a small series as they are fairly costly to produce.
Local printers are never a bad route to go as prices are usually fairly reasonable, paper quality is usually good (and acid free) and if you don't like their paper they're typically happy to use your own (this is the route I use for my prints.)
Typically if you are looking for something to hold up for prints you will want something that says acid free, is pretty resistant to tearing and can stand up to breakage. The following link has a fairly good article on archival papers: http://inkjetstation.com/blog/what-is-archival-quality/
Hope some of this helped.

[Former_Member]

If you want to do the printing yourself, the best thing to do is to test.
Use archival ink and paper. then test different settings and papers to get a print that basically looks as good as the original.
Once you get the results you want, you are good to go.
The initial cost of testing can be reduced by testing on the same piece of paper and not printing the whole image, but just a portion of it in different spots, that helped me a lot. Also do not risk fading with cartridge refills unless you know for sure their quality lasts, I hope that helps

[HamiltonArtandDesign]

I bought a program called paint shop pro--inexpensive and easy to learn to use. I take a picture of my artwork and load it up into this program on my computer where I can enlarge it, correct mistakes, increase the dpi, etc.

When I get an order I give the print company a jpeg of my artwork and then they print, package and send. Etsy changed their rules and you can do this as long as you tell the buyer you are not the printer. I did not want to invest in an expensive printer, scanner etc until I started making a good number of sales. I can't afford it either. I also bought some prints myself before I offered them online to test the quality. Good luck!