#artscow

[upsidedownsmore]

deck of playing card-sized prints I ordered from artscow just came in a couple days ago! (of this piece)

gonna try handing these out at tennocon this year! I might also order another deck or two since I'm pretty happy with this one (though i might make some adjustments if i have the time who knows)

(oh yeah and these prints are secretly just on the backs of regular ass playing cards cause it's cheaper (and maybe a bit gimmicky?) lmao)

I was inspired to go with playing cards partially due to people's suggestions on the original art post, but also because of this small outer wilds nomai print I got randomly from Fangamer alongside my copy of Tunic for switch! I just really like the idea of a smaller print having rounded corners I guess (the artist is Elliot Bouriot btw)

it's very cool I like this outer wilds print a lot :)

idk hopefully it'll be a fun thing to pass around at tennocon, would be cool to try and expand upon the idea in the future though! just might require a lot more work to feel like an actual product if I ever intend on selling this kind of thing lol

[shopwitchvamp]

Ello!! Same person who was trying to emo-fiy his mom lmfao. (Just changed my username) but anyways, how exactly did this business start? It seems newer.

How new does it seem? I'm curious!

Witch Vamp has been solidly it's own thing since 2017, though it was originally "Witch Vampire" for a while and only on Etsy / at conventions. I think my first skirts hit the con scene in 2015, but at the time the vast majority of what I was doing was crocheted amigurumi plushies (which I'd been selling since 2008).

The most ancient of my skirts!

This is gonna be SO long sooo if you want a whole spiel, it's under the break-

How those first few skirts started was that a friend said, "Hey, I found this place called ArtsCow where you can get custom clothing printed! Wanna try making skirts?" And I was desperate for anything I could try selling that didn't involve me literally and actively breaking my body to produce it (I had multiple bouts of tendonitis in my wrist from crocheting a ridiculous amount to produce enough plushies for cons ✌️🥲), so I tried designing some patterns to put on skirts, zipper bags, lanyards, etc. After a time, skirts were doing really well in particular.

Between 2015-2018 there was a gradual shift from the focus of my time/work/con tables/etc going from plushies to clothing. By 2019 I gave up crocheting all together and had fully shifted my focus to Witch Vamp, and it's also when I set up my shopify so I could have a stand-alone site and start escaping Etsy.

Side note, 2018 and especially 2019 I was slowing down on cons a lot. I used to get sick all the time, be exhausted and miserable all the time, and generally had started feeling too old & weary to keep doing them at such a grueling pace. I also spent about 1/4 of each of those years having run off to Japan to do an English teaching/Japanese learning exchange program in a countryside town called Ojiya. Going into 2020 I thought I might be returning to Japan to teach full time and help the program director open an English school for adults in a nearby city.. But 2020 had a big surprise in store for us all, didn't it? As you can guess those plans got absolutely demolished. So 2020 hit and cons got cancelled, Japan plans got cancelled, thankfully I had already started up my shopify so I went fully online-only pretty quickly. Things started picking up quite a bit in 2021 & 2022, and in 2022 I left Fresh Hot Flavors (a group shop I was in with other artists, including the one that got a bunch of us ((as in me, FHF, Vetiverfox, and Maya Kern)) all started on this clothing journey) to only run Witch Vamp. Around the same time my partner quit his increasingly awful job and started helping me out with the shop instead. January 2023 is when we made the business part of our partnership official and Witch Vamp became Witch Vamp LLC. Up until then I'd been a sole proprietorship the whole time and doing all of everything myself. With my partner around to start taking on various tasks (like fulfilment and customer service emails) and with my clothing order schedule no longer being tied to FHF, things started to speed up a ton. This is when Witch Vamp fully coalesced into Witch Vamp as it is now, with the weekly restocks and more frequent new designs and preorders. If you consider the business as having started (in it's current state) as when the LLC was formed, then yeah it is pretty darn new! But depending on when you consider it starting it also goes wayyy back. It's been a long road, haha. PS: if you're interested in seeing old designs, plushies, and con tables from my past life, I made a big long post about it -here- :D

[nathanier]

Digitized free .PNG of that JP exclusive sweater

I have access to a heat press so I'm gonna sublimate MY OWN Klonoa sweater. You can too. Feel free to use these images to make your own shirt or sweater for yourself. Just don't mass produce and sell it or anything. Also posted here: www.patreon.com/posts/94206986 ko-fi.com/s/d4b2e19a96

- DO NOT sell items with this image on it if you go through a MANUFACTURER (ArtsCow, Teespring, etc.) or print on-demand service. Digitize it yourself if you want to do that.

If you are selling an item with this digitized file, link back to this page so the user may opt to customize an item on their own. ko-fi.com/s/d4b2e19a96

[mayakern]

Hi there, I’m a fellow fashion designer and illustrator and I’ve been really inspired by the clothes you’ve been posting lately. Would you be open to a short conversation where I might pick your brain for some of the things you wish you’d known going into the all-over sublimation fabric printing (also, I’d love to learn more abt how you went about finding a manufacturer)

when you find a manu, make a color test garment to test their color range. i did two versions of this for working with our new manu, a color block skirt and a skirt that was a mashup of a bunch of my designs that use different color palettes and drawing processes, so i could see how the printer handled crisp line work vs textural painting etc etc.

direct to garment printing and sublimation are different processes and your files will need to be different. dtg generally maxes out at 100dpi. sublimation can go to like 1400dpi and will look bad if your files are under 300dpi.

making clothing is expensive. to make a living off of it, you need a good profit margin* and enough inventory that the net sales make you a livable wage. unless you take out a loan (something i would not recommend doing unless you are extremely confident), building up the disposable income to afford that much inventory takes time. for me it took about 3-4 years, and even then it was Tight. it takes time to educate customers about your product and credibility and it takes time to build interest/recognition. everything snowballs. it’s slow as fuck at first grows exponentially.

* generally a good rule of thumb is retail cost should be 3x the manufacturing cost. that way you make enough money that one sale can pay for you to make two of the same type of garment. this is because your revenue needs to be able to cover the cost of ONE new garment + operating costs + taxes + the stuff you need to live like food etc etc, but all of that is too complicated to factor in so that’s why the shorthand is 3x.

as for finding a manu, that’s really not my field. i started off working with companies like artscow and vograce, which are much more approachable for new ppl. after that my wife took over contacting manufacturers and started interfacing with them over alibaba. now we contract a supply chain manager to help us find manufacturers, mostly not thru alibaba. her name is ash and you can contact her at Aaccstudios1@ gmail. com if you’d like to hire her.

this is the most useful information i can think of off the bat. if you have a more specific question, feel free to send an ask, and if you are absolutely set on having a more in depth conversation with me, we can schedule a call but i will charge a small consultation fee bc it would require an amount of preparation on my part that i don’t have a lot of time for.

[hs-killjam]

Trust me I'm a normal person

(art credit: @sovonight [bought the digital files from their ko-fi], please support them and their art!)

(Bought the dakimakura on artscow)

[mogai-sunflowers]

Hi! sorry if this is a dumb question but how did you manage to make and buy your own clothing? Is there a website for it?

hi hi!!! i use a wonderful website called artscow.com - it's definitely a little bit more on the expensive side. if you live in China or close to it then the shipping costs shouldn't be too bad, but for me the shipping costs were a little bit more than they usually were. but i've saved a lot of money from my job so i was able to buy a few things!

there are plenty of websites where you can design your own clothes, but i love artscow because you can put the design over the entire product, not just in a small square area in the middle of the shirt! i've gotten a few shirts from them before and they turned out BEAUTIFULLY so they're quite trustworthy too!!

[freshhotflavors]

Do you make custom skirts? Thank you!

Due to the costs (manufacturing minimums) and time (we have so many designs we wanna make!) involved, we do not offer custom skirts. Artscow is where we started making skirts back in 2014, and they can just make 1 thing for you, so if you want something custom you can try there!

[kaxen]

Anyone got recommendations for handbags that let people know I like 10m tall death machines?

Normally, I would draw a new handbag design myself and get it printed from Artscow, but I still can't look at a mecha I have drawn without feeling incompetent and my current bag is falling apart and held together with prayers and glue because I keep not drawing anything to my satisfaction...

The general lack of Armored Core VI merch is making me tilted.

THE VINYL SOUNDTRACK DOESN'T EVEN HAVE NEW ART ON THE SLEEVE. BAH!!!!

The only official merch I have seen is Supergroupie's White Glint stuff and it's like TOO SUBTLE. TOO EXPENSIVE. NOT MY DOG 621.

I need a bag approximately 10" x 10" x 2.5" because that fits my water bottle and pencil box.

Maybe I should just commission someone to draw my AC.

[kaxenart]

My current messenger bag is starting to get holes and I want to draw a new design and I need to get it done before 6/12 because Artscow's bag sale ends then.

[aftonfamilyvalues]

NTA Papyrus was the first daki I bought. Never 'used' except to send a photo over skype of me feeding him spaghetti. I think the reason was parasocial/peer pressure because at the time I was orbiting someone who talked about ordering a sans daki from artscow.

there certainly are some characters in my inbox at times, huh?

[turboerin]

Got a LOT of questions about patch design, hab, stickers and more tonight so just to clarify: you can go to TurboErin.com to access ALL my stuff/links. Stickers: I make 99% of my stickers in small batches at home using my printer, laminator, and my silhouette cameo 4. If they are a popular design that I have to restock I work with a manufacturer like StickerApp or Sticker Ninja. Clothing: I draw everything in Procreate and work with a 3rd Party Print On Demand company who manufactures and ships the items. For basic tees and hoodies, TeePublic is amazing for print on demand and runs sales often. For larger hab quantities I (and many others) have had tremendous success with CustomInk. For ALL OVER/Sublimation printing (like my cute hoodie you saw today) you can use companies like Printful or Artscow. I use Printful on my website, and they charge me before they charge you so I only accept PayPal orders for print on demand items. Patch Design/Custom Work: My commission policies are listed on the "Commissions" tab on my website. My rates start at $100 for design and the typical patch design does not exceed that. For manufacturers, you can use my affiliate code ErinT10 at patch.dog for 10% custom patches. Other shit: - Acrylic Keychains and lanyards can be made through Vograce - Enamel pins can be made through Enamel Pin Factory - I can make simple one off shirt designs using the silhouette cameo and heat transfer vinyl (like the matching hoodies I made for F5 and I at the Charm City Christmas Pub Crawl). Anymore questions? Feel free to comment or shoot me a DM! also my commissions are WIDE OPEN :) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoTTrJvAwtV/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[dansepants]

[shopwitchvamp]

not trying to be a hater, but genuinely curious, long ago i saw some people saying your skirts were of a lower quality and were prone to being torn and ripped because of this lower quality, was that a fluke in certain pieces or did you begin selling clothes at a lower quality with a lower price point until you could afford to ship out clothes made of better materials?

Hmmm, a couple questions to narrow down what you heard that about:

1) how long is long ago? If you mean reeeeally long ago (before about.. 2017?) Then they were totally different skirts from a totally different manufacturer.

2) who were the people saying that? (because sometimes people put some rude stuff in comments on posts when they've never even seen my skirts in person, but also if it was specifically sometime in summer last year I might have been the one you saw complaining about quality issues)

3) was it definitely about my skirts or was it about similar ones somewhere else? I get confused with other people a lot, so just to check.

Regardless, I've never heard of anything ripping or tearing, but I have had issues with pilling. The first thing to come to mind is that last year I did have a bad batch of skirts where the issue went further back than the manu that does the printing for my skirts, to the manu they get blank fabric from.

Summer 2022 there was a much, much higher percentage of skirts than usual with some kind of fabric flaw where the fabric was pilling very quickly, sometimes after only being worn once. This was while I was still with FHF, so some of their skirts were affected too, but just by chance more of my designs had issues than theirs. Spider Lily Maxis in particular got the worst of it. Maya Kern (who was also using the same manu at the time) had similar issues with some skirts' fabric around that time too.

This is when I started switching over to "Milk Silk" fabric after getting some samples from my manu of different fabric options and running them through a bunch of testing (high heat washing and drying, friction tests, etc). The "Milk Silk" option not only felt softer/smoother, but it also turned out to be much more durable than the "Matte" fabric I used to use. So that's what's available on the shop now.

Anyone that got a dud skirt was sent a replacement made with the new fabric as soon as I had them on hand.

Also the cost to me from my manu hasn't changed (beyond shipping fluctuations), so none of this has anything to do with cost cutting before or after getting that bad batch.

If this is about skirts waaaay further back in the 2014-2016 range though, we were using ArtsCow which still wasn't about cost vs quality but about accessibility and being able to order as little as one thing at a time. Finding a manufacturer to work with directly instead of going through a company like ArtsCow took time, and the very very early skirts were an experiment more than anything. I didn't think I'd end up in fashion, haha. Mainly I was selling handmade crocheted plushies back then and just wanted to try out making skirts because my friends were also doing it and it was a fun and cool new thing to offer at cons.

[mayakern]

Are you accepting collaboration on designs, or at least follower-submitted ones? As a huge geology nerd I would love to make some designs for your skirts, but I both lack the resources to open an online store and the contacts to get my designs out there. I'm not even as interested in profiting as I am contributing to your store.

If there's an email address I can forward this query to I'm happy to address it there as well.

no sorry, we do not have open calls for collaborators

to date, we’ve only collabed with three outside artists (sergle, rii abrego, and meyoco). this is in part because i do not have the time to comb through what would doubtlessly be hundreds of submissions if i did open up applications, and in part because our minimum order with our new factory is around 400-500 pieces per design per style (midi vs mini) for printed skirts, so we have to be confident we can sell whatever designs we create.

if you’re interested in getting your own designs on apparel, i recommend trying print on demand places like threadless, artscow, yoycol, etc. in general, print on demand is quite expensive so the quality isn’t as high as something produced in larger batches, but there are specialty services you can find online that will make high quality print on demand pieces, tho they are quite spendy.

[mimosastudio]

My goal for 2020 (and leading up to it!) is to spend more time on my online store. My Etsy isn’t even 1/100th of everything that I have 😅 so I just listed a small handful of coin purses! And will try to keep listings in stock on those going forward. Next will be double sided acrylic charms when they arrive next month! . . . . #coinpurses #artscow #chibiart #chibiartist #kawaiiart #kawaiiartist #illustratorsofinstagram #cutebags #cutesloth #manekineko #tacosarelife #ramenislife #coffeeislife #sushiislife #chocobo #finalfantasy #hollowknight #toothless #harrypotter #hogwartshouses #totoroart #sailormoon #lunaartemis #pandas https://www.instagram.com/p/B6lZdTHFmrX/?igshid=1xe84z5ijxzas