hello hello happy new year welcome to another studio vlog i feel like it's been
a while since i've uploaded a studio vlog how are you all how is 2021 treating you
so far hopefully it's considerably better than 2020. so i have my 2021 soul and fire calendar
there are a handful of these left on my store so if you want to pick yourself up a calendar and
join in the fun when we change the months together i'll leave the link to these in the description
but without further ado let's switch it to january and we've got this i feel like we
all needed this message so yes today first task is as always to tidy my office because it has
accumulated a lot of stuff and i've been avoiding it for the past two weeks and then i'm gonna order
some new products i'm gonna show you how i do that i'm gonna hopefully design and cut and print some
new stickers on my cricut because one of my new year's resolutions slash like business goals was
to actually use my cricut more because i bought it i don't know when last year and i haven't been
able to use it half as much as i wanted to so that is one of my goals for this year and yeah i just
need to kind of quickly spruce up my office figure things out and we will order those products i hope
you're excited for a very exciting soul & fire launch i am i'm kind of terrified but excited also
things looking considerably neater now and i've plugged my laptop into my screen
this camera is a little bit too low for me and yeah i'm going to show you what i'm ordering
so i'm actually going to order some of the soul & fire pens i believe i have one yeah
so i'm going to order some of these pens you see the pen says soul & fire on it so i'm going to
order some of these i'm going to show you what the document looks like when i do it i'm debating
actually whether to do it with it saying soul and fire on it like the logo or having a little
motivational quote on it i'm swaying towards the quote because i feel like it's nice to get
a soul & fire branded pen with these little mini desk pads i've launched these in my last launch
and they're like pocket sized perfect for you know your handbag shopping list that kind of thing and
it comes with the pen so i feel like it's quite nice having the soul and fire pen with that so
maybe i'll do something with a little quote on it because when i very first brought those pens
out i don't have it with me i brought a pen out that said be fearless which is like be
fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire that's sort of where the shop name and
everything came from my hair is so frizzy today so yeah let me just show you what i do for that
i've actually just found this document of when i first tried to design my soul & fire logo you can
sort of see the process of it see some doodles like playing around with the letter placements
flipping the letters around and then eventually i came to this and then this one down here is
the final one and i thought that was quite cool i've not seen this for a while i think down here
on my initial sketches oh there's like i think i must have drawn this on my ipad there was going
to be like little symbols of fire but then i i felt like it reminded me of like tinder
the tinder logo but yeah a little progress of the brand right there so when i did the pens for the
soul & fire thing basically all i used was this so i'm copying this and i'm going to create a new
artboard so new then i'm gonna flip this artboard horizontally paste in that logo
and drag this up so the pen supplier that i use just likes a pretty basic design obviously there's
not much room on the pen for anything anymore technical so i'd literally send them that and
then they size it up on the thing for me but because we want to do some quotes i'm gonna
duplicate this artboard and try a few different designs and we'll see sort of how that looks
all right so i've got a few more quotes and straight up i think this one's too long so i'll
get rid of that artboard properly in a second and this one i want to try and keep things pg
then this one i'm gonna get rid of i use that one quite a lot make it happen is gonna be on the new
daily list pad thing oh in fact i can show you that so the daily list pads i have officially
ordered these i'm crossing my fingers and toes that they come and look as beautiful
as i imagine in my head you never really know that's the thing like especially when ordering
something new i remember when i first ordered these i was terrified of them being awful because
obviously for a small business it's a lot of money to pay out even for bigger businesses
it's it's a big risk and generally you can't get samples because they only print like a minimum
amount so you can't just get a one-off so yeah i remember when i ordered these it was stressful but
now i've actually found a supplier i like that's good so um yeah if you're also worried about
suppliers and manufacturers and stuff like that what i'd say is look for reviews go on
their facebook that's generally where you can find like bad reviews people generally like to moan on
facebook and then if you can message them ask for a sample for example i don't know if i still have
it i asked for a calendar sample from my calendar supplier and they didn't send me a print of my
calendar they sent like a mock-up one so i could feel the material and sort of get an idea of it so
that's another way around it and generally businesses don't mind doing that either for
free or for a little payment depending if you've like worked with them before and i always make
a spreadsheet full of all the different websites that i've looked at the prices how much everything
is per item the postage all that kind of stuff and like work it out like that so it's a very very
long process before christmas i think i showed you a vlog when me and my mum were trying to research
notebooks we finally got there so notebooks are in the works but it's just such a long process
hopefully now i'm like starting to create products more often i'll be able to sort of find suppliers
that i trust but in the initial stage it's kind of scary anyway that was a long-winded chat
basically i've ordered these and i did show you them a little while ago and they're gonna be ring
bound so picture i'm gonna use this calendar picture the cover being like this with like
spiral bound on it and then when you open the book the first page will have a little quote and
then it will open to a list page this is like my camera is so bright i don't know if this will work
there we go so we've got a list page we've got a treat section tomorrow we've got a schedule a list
the date the day some notes and doodles so this is everything that i think most people will need on a
list pad and because it is spiral bound you'll be able to tear out the pages as you go so it's sort
of a similar principle to my daily pad except it's got a cover and you can like put in your bag and
take it with you without the pages getting scuffed like this is sort of made for on your desk or
in this case stuck on your fridge or whatever whereas a um book you can slide in your bag
take to uni take to work that kind of thing so that's the plan with those i will let you
know as soon as they are up i'll show you the process of us packaging them as always
and i'm gonna put a poll on my instagram i think asking about these pens i actually put a poll
on instagram about this i showed it in three different colors so there was like a navy blue
this orange and then it was like a blush pink i guess and it was overwhelmingly pink that came out
top and i really didn't think that was gonna happen i'm gonna show you the poll you can see
how many people voted for that so this is the poll that i put up which color no right or wrong answer
and when you click through for the results i'm gonna try and cover everyone's names
the pink has overwhelmingly got the highest votes blue and orange
were like sort of tied pretty much with blue being a little bit higher and the one that was my
favorite was orange and didn't even get a look in basically so i ordered the pink one i hope that's
okay see pink to me was like a color that is a bit hit and miss i feel like it's a little bit
like marmite but turns out my audience like pink so i went for pink i trusted your guy's opinion
so i'm gonna put that poll on instagram and then i am gonna attempt to design some stickers i think
i'm going to utilize some existing designs to begin with just so i can like build up my
confidence in stickers and like re-figure out how to use my cricut because it has been that
you might notice i look completely different i've got less makeup on and that's because it's the
next day yesterday just completely got away with me so we're here again we're gonna revisit i did
actually get the sticker sheets designed yesterday i just need to add the sort of cut lines and then
obviously need to print and cut so i'm gonna show you that but first i'm gonna show you the design
that i came up with i actually really like it i've gone with like two designs but maybe let me
know maybe i'll do a poll again on instagram i've gone with one that has like all the colors that i
usually use and then i've got one that's gray and then i'm gonna do like a top border and a bottom
border i haven't yet done the borders yet but i'm gonna just print the colorful one you'll see
what i mean so this is my existing sticker sheet which is available already on my shop so now i've
adapted and created this one which i thought was quite good because it means you get like multiples
of everything especially the list options you've got some like highlighter things i might have to
change sizes and stuff on this i did sort of like guess between the two but when i print it out it
might look a bit different so we'll figure that one out and then i also have begun to do a gray
one so for people who maybe don't have my planner or would prefer like a neutral color theme i've
done that and then i'm gonna probably not this pattern this is a pattern from one of my weekly
planners i'm gonna do a pattern at the top and the bottom just so it looks a bit more colorful
maybe not a pattern just like a color i don't know we'll figure that one out but i am about to
print this one out so what i need to do is export the artboard so go to file export actually not
even export let's go save as we want to save it as a pdf under stickers pdf we want page number two
or artboard number two and what i'm gonna do is open it in photoshop where i'm gonna put it in a
document that is the right size for printing cut i'm using my minnie mouse's head as a tripod so
if you didn't know on the cricut there's like a limited size like there's a maximum size you can
go up to with print and cut so i did write that down somewhere it's 9.25 inches by 6.75 inches
that's as big as you can make the actual artwork and then it prints out with like a border around
the outside so i'm gonna just sort this out and then i will show you the process of like taking
it over to my printer and then taking it over to my cricket child oh i'm so excited to use her
okay so i'm now in cricut design space i'm gonna create a new project and i am going to upload
my images so i'm gonna drag and drop the files i need so we've got the cut file which is the one
i've just created on photoshop i'm just gonna put it as simple because it's literally just
two colors black and white and then i click the white to get rid of it so i know it's going to
cut around these black parts then i'm going to press continue oops accidentally click something
else what do i undo there we go continue so now we have the cut file we want it to be a cut
image only so now i'm going to upload the actual artwork files so now i'm going to drag the jpeg
in so now we have the print image we want it to be complex i want it to print as high quality as
possible press continue check everything's okay i can zoom out to see the whole thing so you can
see what it's going to print then i'm going to press continue i want it to be print image
so save as print then cut which means it will first print out that pattern with a guideline
around it and then i cut it and then what i'm going to do is quickly format it up on the
canvas so i'll import these two images then i'll resize them to fit that size i mentioned earlier
and then we'll print them this is the matte white sticker paper that i use and i also have
my canon ip8750 printer i will leave a link to this in my description and i'm just going to plug
it straight into my laptop it is wireless but i find it's just more trustworthy and more reliable
when it's actually plugged in so yeah i have all three printers sort of like linked by this usb
let's load some of the sticker paper into here generally the sticker paper is more yellow on
the non-sticker side so i'm going to put that to the back and this printer also prints up to a3
so i have to like adjust the little slider things here all right and then i've got my documents set
up if you'd like me to go through it in more detail how i do it let me know i didn't show
you fully this time because it's been a while and i wasn't too sure myself i think i've mastered it
so i've attached everything to the board the mat i'm going to click make it and you can see that
it's mapping out where on a piece of a4 paper it's going to print these sheets and then it prints out
a black outline so i'm happy with that my paper's the good size continue and then i'm going to send
to printer and once it's sent to the printer and print it out i'm going to connect my cricut
sticker sheet is printed and put on my light grip board i'm gonna head back to design space
and i'm gonna put it on sticker paper removable pressure default the tools is just like the
fine point blade that's all we need and then it's ready to load so i'm just gonna slide it
in here under the little guides press the flashing button then it's grabbed hold of it then because
the software knows what is ready to be cut all i need to do is press this button and hopefully
it'll start cutting in the right place let's see how this goes because sometimes it's quite off
and i have to calibrate it and at the minute it's just looking for the guide markers it's turned on
a light and it's trying to read those black lines and i'm pretty sure it's found them straight away
all right and there we have some new sticker sheets i'm going to calibrate my machine again
because it has sort of trimmed the edges a little bit weird so either my blade needs sharpening or i
just need to set up a bit differently but i'm very happy with this for a first test print i think
that actually is really cute and i would most definitely use them so hopefully you guys would
too i'm actually going to end the vlog here before it gets dark because i'm going to spend my evening
i'm going to correct these stickers so watch out for those on my soul & fire instagram and
my shop and then i've just got a evening full of admin which is not exciting to film so i'm gonna
say goodbye now thank you so much for watching thank you for the endless support on my channel
honestly it means the absolute world to me and i'll see you next time in the next video bye you