Hey everyone, welcome back! So I received an exciting package today. I'm finally making merch again after 3 years and Vogue Grace contacted me at the most perfect time to help me produce my merch products.
Bowgris is one of the most well-known online merch manufacturers where you can produce various merch items, such as acrylic charms, stickers, washi tapes, fabric goods, etc. They are known for their accessibility and the huge range of products that they offer, especially acrylic charms as you can see in this sample package they sent me. There are a lot of customization options for acrylic products that they already offer on their website, starting from adding simple lamination to out-of-the-box stuffs like this. So today's video will be hanging out with me while drawing this baby wonder acrylic charm, and after that, I'm going to briefly go over some of my personal merch tips, as well as how you can make your own merch from Fulgrace. The concept of this merch is wanderer from Jetsune Impact as a baby with different milk flavors.
As I've been planning from some time ago that I wanted to make a lanyard keychain for this concept, I've made the designs of the lanyard and the basic sketches of the acrylic part already. There will be commentaries about some of my thought process given in text throughout the video so that I don't interrupt the chill time left with my voice. Okay so let's go!
Thank So here's the final design, and I also want to add a semi-transparent color layer to the acrylic. I'm actually quite excited about this part because I think not many local vendors in my country can do this yet. So if you print with Fograze, what you want to do is create a new layer below the design layer, and fill that layer with the color that you want. the semi-transparent part. You can make it flat colored like this or you can also make it a gradient like this.
Please be mindful to not select a color that's too light though, as Woe Gray says it will come out very close to just regular transparent. If the color is set, you want to change the name of the layer into semi-transparent. It's also advised that you convert the design file from RGB color to CMYK color by going to Image Color CMYK. Now you can save this file as a PSD. If you're only printing an acrylic charm, you can just submit this PSD to Fogris website.
But since I wanted this to be a lanyard keychain, I will include the design file of my lanyard and an explanation or the mockup of the product. If you have a lot of variations in your design and want them customized, it's a good idea to make mockups like this so that no communication is missed. So I put together my acrylic term PSD, my lanyard PSD, and my mockup image into one compressed folder, and upload that into this upload artworks section in Fogre's website.
Now add 2 cards and check the details before finalizing the order. If you have anything to say about the customization, any requests about the package, etc., you can write it down on the order note on the right. If you have any discount codes, you can apply it here.
Speaking about discounts, Walgreens has new promotions every month where you pick certain products to be discounted for that month, and for March, these are the list of the items. You can check the list of discounted items every month by going to the activities tab on the upper right hand side and then clicking on the monthly discount activity banner. WoeGrace also have a VIP program where you can get even more discounts.
I'll put more information on this in the description below. So here's the finished result of my baby wonder lanyard charm. First of all, I'm very impressed at how smooth and sharp the printing quality is. It's not grainy at all, and you know how on some keychains there are sometimes white outlines surrounding the art because of some minor offsets? There just isn't any of that on Rourke's keychains.
Also can we talk about how good the semi-transparent blue background turned out? It really does bring out the various flavors concept that I have for this term so much more and I just love it so much. Another point is that the colors on the printed goods from progress are very close to what I see on my screen, and the dark colors especially translated very well.
I also ordered a couple more acrylic term types which are the epoxy holographic term and the gold edge term. For the holographic term, I chose the broken glass holo lamination and they just look so good from all angles. The epoxy coating is also very neat and is very satisfying to look at. As for the gold etched arm, I must say it goes really well with the character and the gold cloth that I had chosen.
I also made two types of washi tape with woagreys, which are a regular washi tape and a stamp washi tape. Stamp washi tape is basically a masking tape that is pre-cut in the shape of a postage stamp. The materials is really good, it's got a pretty nice sticking power.
But at the same time, you can still peel it off and restick it again if you change your mind. I've been wanting to make these for a long time and I'm glad I was able to make them with bow grease. So my end verdict is that I'm very impressed at how high quality everything is.
I had ordered a lot of merch types, each with different customizations such as the semi-transparent part, different shade clasps, different laminations, etc. But they got all my orders correct without any mix-ups. As long as you organize your files nicely and give visual explanations, you can sit back and rest assured, as you are in good hands.
My only tip if you want to try creating with Vogue Race is that you should spare quite some time before your scheduled clone to print. I think all this took around 2 months from the day I sent the files to the day I received the products, which is a bit longer than I had anticipated. But turns out, it was because washi tapes take the longest to produce.
To be completely honest, I was fully ready to nitpick anything I could nitpick on because of the long wait time, but after the box arrived and I saw the finished products, I feel that the time I spent waiting for the production has paid off, as I'm very impressed with how everything turned out. So that has been my experience and thoughts on ordering from Fulgrace. If you enjoyed the stuff in this video, all my merch will be available at my store opening around mid-April, so please do drop by then.
I will leave the links as well as more info on them in the description box below. Thank you again to Fogrees for sponsoring this video and for letting me have a try of their services. It's actually one of my first times manufacturing acrylic merch products from overseas. I'm so pleasantly surprised at how insanely good the quality of everything is and I look forward to creating more.
Thank you so much everyone for watching, I hope you find this review video helpful and I'll see you again next time.