Holiday Season

[Dave Strickler]

With the holiday season almost upon us, Christmas ornament sales are already booming. I'm sure the ornaments pictured look very familiar to most of you. The demand for the photo ornaments in the middle of the picture has been incredible. It seems that for each one I sell, I get 3 more inquiries about them. Thanks again for this great forum. It is indescribable what a help it has been to me.

26199

Dave Strickler
York Laser, Inc.

[Ed Lang]

As a new laser owner, my Universal M-300-50W will ship on the 23rd.

What material are you making them out of?
Price points?
Venue that create the best sales?

Above questions are only if you, or others don't mind telling.

It would be nice to generate some cash before Christmas since I just bought this machine!

Thanks for suggestions or lending a helping hand.

[Jeff Chumbley]

Dave do you have a store front? And may I ask what you charge for the photo ornaments?

Jeff

[Dave Strickler]

Hello Ed,

Welcome to The Creek. The wood ornaments in the picture are made from 1/8" red alder which I get from http://www.lazerwood.com/ .

The acrylic ornaments are made from clear and white 1/8" cast acrylic which I get from http://www.delviesplastics.com/ .

The photo ornaments are made from 1/4" cast acrylic which I also get from Delvies Plastics.

I charge $15.00 each for the photo ornaments, and from $3.00 to $5.00 each for the regular ornaments, depending on the time it takes to make them. Prices can vary greatly depending on the venue you are selling them in. I've done very well at craft shows selling the ornaments, and taking orders for photo ornaments, photos engraved onto marble, and cake pans with personalized lids.

Most of the ornament designs came from http://www.berrybasket.com/Berrybasket.asp?VendorID=AP-WDB

Search this forum and you will find a lot of info. adressing each of your questions. I've had my laser ( 30w Explorer) for about 9 months and this forum has been invaluable to me.

[Jeff Chumbley]

I agree with you on the huge amounts of invaluable information here. Just testing the waters on pricing I am in that ball park myself. I have that berrybasket cd its worth every penny.

I have only been to a couple craft fairs and not been really sucessful. Don't know what I am doing wrong.

Jeff

[Ed Lang]

Do you use PhotoGrav to do the picture ornaments?

I have not ordered it yet.

Is there another easy way to engrave pictures?

[Dave Strickler]

Hi Jeff,

I don't have a storefront yet. To save on overhead, I started the business out of my garage and after about 2 months of practicing and learning, I started setting up at craft shows. My stand at the craft shows drew a lot of attention, and even if I didn't make a sale to someone, I made sure to give them a business card, and a lot of sales came after the show itself. Word of mouth has been my only advertising thus far, although I am planning on doing some newspaper advertising soon.

[Dave Strickler]

Ed,

Yes, I use Photograv for the ornaments. They can be done without Photograv, but it is much more time consuming with mixed results. I highly recommend Photograv.

[Jeff Chumbley]

Dave do you have a problem with the dang white box around your bitmaps when you put an elipse around the pic and power clip it into the elipse.

Jeff

[Jeff Chumbley]

As far as craft shows go I get alot of the "wow thats cool" i'm gonna take your card and call you. ...........................well i can tell ya I havent gone over my min's yet.

[Abdul Baseer Hai]

Hi Dave

I was wondering what material do you specify for the acrylic picture ornaments, in Photograv. If it is custom defined, then how do you do that.

thanks
Abdul

[Dave Strickler]

Hello Abdul,

For material selection in PhotGrav, under plastics, use clear acrylic(cast type). When you save the engraved image, it will ask you if you want the picture flipped. Check yes because the engraving looks better when it is on the back of the acrylic and viewed from the front, through the clear acrylic. After I powerclip the PhotoGraved bitmap into the snowflake in CorelDraw, I add a black fill to the snowflake. This causes the entire star to engrave a frosty white except for the dark areas of the photo itself.

To prep the bitmap for PhotGrav, I use Corel Photo Paint. For most pictures, I cut the subject out of the background, then add a white background so it blends with the white of the snowflake better. I also found that the photo looks better on the snowflake when I "wash it out" in Photo Paint, making it brighter with more intentisty than I would for a picture going onto black marble. It takes some experimentation to see what works best.

[Jeff Chumbley]

Thank you for all of your responses David.

[Abdul Baseer Hai]

Dave

thanks a lot. i will try it in a day or two and let you know.

Regards

Abdul

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

After reading this thread, I loved the cast Christmas ornaments, so we ordered the cast acrylic, thank you Dave for sharing.

I have tried the link to the berrybasket but it says they are off line. Does anyone know when they'll be back on line. I tried a snowflake that I had but I am not crazy about it and we really want to order the ones from berrybasket.

Thanks again for the ideas, you're still a great bunch of people!

God Bless,
James & Zelma (Psalms 18:2)

Just figured out I can always email them. Thanks

[Joe Pelonio]

Last year I found the best selling ornaments to be the "green edge" cast acrylic, looks like glass.

[Mike DeRegnaucourt]

[quote=Dave Strickler;245041]Hello Ed,

Welcome to The Creek. The wood ornaments in the picture are made from 1/8" red alder which I get from http://www.lazerwood.com/ .

Hi Dave,

I tried the http://www.lazerwood.com link and get a message that the web page cannot be displayed. :( Is this the correct link for "Lazerwood"? I'd like to check them out.

[Mitchell Andrus]

Mike, that post is almost two years old. It could be that they no longer operate under that URL.

Here are a few others to try:

http://www.coloradoheirloom.com/
http://laserbits.com/
http://www.smith-wood.com/
http://www.cardsofwood.com/index.htm

Mitch

[Dave Strickler]

Mike,
I think the lazerwood site went out of business. You may want to try this link for Great Balls of Wood. They also sell wood strips, including alder.

http://www.gbow.com/

I'm off to golf course!! Have a great day everyone!

Dave Strickler

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

"I have tried the link to the berrybasket but it says they are off line. Does anyone know when they'll be back on line."

[Mike DeRegnaucourt]

Thank you Mitchell and Dave...I'll check them out. http://www.sawmillcreek.org/images/icons/icon14.gif

[George M. Perzel]

Hi Mike;
Check out this thread for thin wood info.
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=63092&highlight=ornaments
Best regards;
George
LaserArts

[Ed Newbold]

Thanks for suggestions or lending a helping hand.Hi Ed! Fancy meeting you here! And welcome to the wild 'n wooly world of laser engraving. Like others, I did a booming business in Christmas ornaments last year and now is the time to get cranking on them.

Hope to see some of your creations on the board soon!

[Ed Newbold]

With the holiday season almost upon us, Christmas ornament sales are already booming. I'm sure the ornaments pictured look very familiar to most of you. The demand for the photo ornaments in the middle of the picture has been incredible. It seems that for each one I sell, I get 3 more inquiries about them. Thanks again for this great forum. It is indescribable what a help it has been to me. Dave Strickler Hey Dave, are those complete .cdr files of the middle four ornaments or did you create them from .jpgs? I like the photo in the middle of the pointy snowflakes! Very cool!

[Barbara Buhse]

Dave,
I've had great success with my ornaments.... last year my best seller was one I designed myself, a christmas tree ornament for Hannukah. This year I'm going to see if i can't come up with another hannukah design.

[Dave Strickler]

Ed,

The Ornament designs are from The Berrybasket Ornament CD. They are in PDF format. The PDF files can be opened in Corel Draw, and the designs can then be ungrouped, copied, and treated like a normal vector file.

Like Barbara, I also have created a lot of original designs for the photo ornaments since I posted that picture almost 2 years ago. The snowflake design was the first I sold as a photo ornament, but I got a lot of requests for other designs. I now have 2 angel designs, snowmen, Christmas trees......... etc. Some were created from the Berrybasket CD and others are my originals. People in this area love the photo ornaments ( Central Pa. ). They are a relatively inexpensive, they are personal, and make a great gift for those hard to buy for relatives. I package them in white, square jewelry style boxes with black tissue paper inside which gives them a "classy", professional look.

Originally I charged $15.00 each plus tax for the photo ornaments, but last year I raised the price a bit to $20.00 each ( include 6% sales tax). None of my customers flinched a bit over the price increase. Pricing is still a problem for me with this type of product. I like to make a fair profit, but still keep the item affordable and not seem overly expensive to the customer. So, the mystery question is always, how high can I go without scaring too many customers away?

Dave Strickler

[Barbara Buhse]

Dave,
Last year I sold my photo ornaments (with engraved photo) for $24... however, I made three identical ornaments for that price (cost of the wood is minimal, and the work is already done after the first one). I also gave the customer the option of putting three different messages on the back. This worked out well because they got one for each set of grandparents and one for themselves... this year I will be raising the price to $29 for them.

Barbara

[Mike Null]

Zelma
There are a number of snowlakes in your Corel draw clipart and some can be found in your font files.

In addition I would look in the font folder for a file called DF Calligraphic ornaments as there are some pretty neat things there as well.

[Ed Newbold]

Most of the ornament designs came from http://www.berrybasket.com/Berrybasket.asp?VendorID=AP-WDB
Hmmm... when I visit that site I get an error message. Also, when I go to www.berrybasket.com I get this message:

Thank you for visiting Great American Scrollsaw Patterns - a Division of The Berry Basket. Our website is currently offline while revisions are being made. Please check back at a later date. If you need to contact us, please email us at bbasket@berrybasket.com . Thank you.

I really wanted to order that ornament CD from them, dang it.

[Anthony Welch]

I think laserbits is a reseller of the berrybasket holiday cd's.

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

Thank you Mr. Null, I will check that out, my clipart from Corel seems to be very limited.

I too get the same message Mr. Newbold is getting. I did email them but have had no response.

zll

[Linda Tetreault]

Ed,

I think if you email berry basket you can order the ornament CD, there are about 500 designs which will cost about $14.95 instead of about $50 Laserbits.

Or do a google search for berry basket CD's, they may be sold by some of the scrollsaw sites.

edit: foxchapelpublishing (http://www.foxchapelpublishing) has the ornament cd for $14.95

[Brian Conklin]

Are these patterns in .pdf so they can be lasered without any tracing?

thanks.

[Ed Newbold]

I think if you email berry basket you can order the ornament CD, there are about 500 designs which will cost about $14.95 instead of about $50 Laserbits. foxchapelpublishing (http://www.foxchapelpublishing) has the ornament cd for $14.95Thanks a million, Linda. I just went online to Fox and ordered the CD at the price you quoted. I appreciate the info.

[Craig Hogarth]

Are these patterns in .pdf so they can be lasered without any tracing?

thanks.

Yes they are.

I don't like any of the berrybasket ones. The best ones are on the ornament design disk at laserbits. It's designed specifically for laser engraving.

[Stanley Waldrup]

Well I ordered the Berrybasket cd and it arrived today. Lots to choose from. Ordered the plastic and wood from the suppliers that Dave suggested. Now the fun will soon begin. What is the best way to turn the images from the PDF format back to X3. All the ornaments are under 1 pdf file. and I want to export lets say the Orniments on pg 34. Do I need to print page 34 and scan it back in to Corel. Sorry but Corel is a new baby to me and still learning. Just trying to learn the fastest way to get it into corel and getting it converted and ready for the laser.
Thanks
Stanley

[Jim Good]

Stanley,

I'm doing this from memory since I'm out of town right now I can't verify it, but I believe you can import the .pdf file and it will prompt you for the page you want to import. You can import the entire file but it's better to just import the page of interest.

Once you've done that, you'll have to trace it in CorelDraw. Sometimes you'll end up with duplicate lines that you'll want to eliminate. That's left for another post if you need assistance!

Jim

[Marc Myer]

Most .pdf files should have the vector data embedded. If you can, see if you can 'explode' or ungroup the image when you import it from .pdf.
Adobe Illustrator does this well. You can simply ungroup and the vector data is ready to use.

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

Hey, Stanley, we ordered the same CD from FoxChapel on the 12th, but it hasn't arrived yet. Glad to hear there is lot to chose from. As already state you should be able to import into Corel. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

[Dave Strickler]

Stanley,

I have Corel Draw 12, but it should work the same way in X3.

From X3, go to file.......... then open....... then select the PDF file. It will open the entire file in X3. Then simply go to the page of the file you want, select the page and ungroup it. With the pick tool, drag a box around the ornament you want, to select all of its parts, then group these parts together. From there select the ornament, copy it, and paste it into a new file in X3.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

Dave Strickler

[Scott Shepherd]

I ordered this CD as well and it's arrived, but I can't get it into Corel either.

I import pdf's every so often, so I know how, but it doesn't work. When I try and import a page, or all of the pages, text as curves, or text as text, it comes up and says "Import Error" then "No Errors Occured".

I've looked the the security settings on the files and they all show no security features.

Anyone got any ideas?

[Mike Mackenzie]

Scott,

If you have not done this already you may want to.

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?c=Content_C1&cid=1153321224268&lc=en&pagename=CorelCom/Layout&pid=1151092456309

There are two service packs available for X3. I heard rumor that one of these was supposed to correct PDF issues. It might fix what you are seeing.

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

We ordered this CD and received it about 45 minutes ago. I was able to go to file import in CorelDraw and where it gives you a drop down box to choice from I pointed to the CD drive that had the CD in it and it worked, we have CorelDrew 12. But I did import instead of open.

Edit: When I pointed to the CD it give you choices to pick from, I picked patt.

[Scott Shepherd]

Thanks, I'm working on the patches now, and I also tried it in V12 and it opened up just fine.