A Clear Look Into SubliCraft Glass Ornaments
Perhaps you or another feel that a holiday tree can go for a more visible look. With SubliCraft’s glass ornaments, you can still achieve this ultimate goal while also adorning the tree with your very own images or graphics. While they don a smooth and glossy clear surface as a whole, you can apply a sublimation transfer to one side of it, as they’re readily coated to hold such transfers. As a result, printed transfers will permanently appear on these items with a subtle, yet still vivid look suited to any holiday tree. These special ornaments are ready to be produced as photographic gifts to friends and family, or as one-of-a-kind items featuring your bold artwork or brand’s logo.
First, prepare and size your images down to the 3 inch size of a SubliCraft glass ornament. When using graphic design software like Adobe Illustrator, you can first create a 3-and-a-quarter inch circle to use as a clipping mask for your image, then create another 3 inch circle, which will center to the larger circle as a reference layer at 50-percent opacity. Preparing your image in this matter will ensure the easiest way of centering your ornament to it when printed. With the small size of these ornaments in mind, you can prepare multiple images in one page, which also leaves it ready for pressing onto several ornaments in one go.
With your ornament images ready, make sure to hide the reference layers, then you may print them through a sublimation printer. Sawgrass users will need to send their page to Sawgrass Print Manager with these settings: Substrate to Glass, Paper to the loaded paper’s profile, uncheck Mirror, and the Color Mode in the Color tab to Photographic or Vivid based on the preferred color saturation. The Mirror option will need to be disabled for these ornaments, as the printed transfer is essentially applied to their back rather than the front. But once your images have been printed, turn on your heat press and set it to 90 seconds at 400 degrees Fahrenheit with medium pressure. Depending on your heat press, you may need to add an additional 20 to 30 seconds to cover each additional item. And before pressing, be sure to have heat-resistant padding on the lower platen, like the Geo Knight Nomex heat felt we’re using here, to help prevent your items from cracking while pressing.
But with the heat press at temperature, cover the padding with parchment paper, then add your transfer on top. Place each ornament above your printed images, then attach them in place with heat tape. With everything ready to go, cover the items with another parchment paper sheet and press. As a warning for when your padding is larger than the lower platen, be sure to first position your items to where the heating element touches the pad before pressing. Once the time reaches zero, open your machine and allow your items to cool down for at least 30 seconds. As soon as they’ve cooled, quickly peel your ornaments off the transfer, and your colorful images have now been permanently applied to them with a sleek and clear look. If you’d like to learn more about SubliCraft blanks and sublimation in general, be sure to check out our YouTube channel, or visit us at HeatPressNation.com.
