SubliCraft Showcase (Part 1): Accessories To Produce For Your Side Gig
Heat Press Nation’s SubliCraft line has only been growing ever since it began with affordable, high quality mugs in 2019. One of SubliCraft’s goals has been to provide the best sublimation blanks at an affordable cost, especially for crafters looking to turn their side gig into a business. And in following this key goal are recent additions to this line that may be small, but are awaiting to be customized to yours or others needs. These are SubliCraft’s square mats, car coasters, seat belt wraps, luggage spotters, and coin purses.
All of these items are built with a soft and robust poly-rich material ready to maintain colorful sublimation transfers applied onto their white surface. And each one still follows the simple basis of print and press. So in this video, we’ll be going through how they can be fully customized from start to finish using a Sawgrass SG500 sublimation printer, and an HPN CraftPro swing away heat press. Of course, you can use your own sublimation printer and heat press, keeping in mind that their setups and functions will differ from the machines used here.
Let’s first dive into the quare mats, which are a 6" addition to SubliCraft’s larger mouse pads. Though they’re not only ideal for computer users on the go, they can also be used as a soft desk coaster. These can serve as branded items to help bring awareness to yours or another’s business, or as a simple alternate way of selling your best photos or artwork in a small form factor. To clip your image within the imprint area on Adobe Illustrator, create a rectangle or circle that’s a quarter-inch larger than the item’s imprint area. Then import your image to scale it down to your shape’s size, organize it below your shape, select both of them and right click to Create Clipping Mask.
Setting your clipping mask a quarter-inch larger than the base provides extra bleed, preventing your image from appearing clipped when applied to your item. Templates will work with this same process, albeit with the bleed shape already created. But with your image prepared, you can fit duplicates or prepare other images depending on your paper’s size. However, our 8.5"x11" paper will only be able to fit one image for one pad. Once you’re ready, you may print it through your sublimation printer. For Sawgrass printers, send it to Sawgrass Print Manager with these settings: Substrate to Polyester, Paper to your paper’s profile, leave Mirror checked, and in the Color tab, set the Color Mode to Photographic or Vivid depending on your images’ level of saturation.
We typically use Vivid as this brings out the most vibrant colors for our images. These SPM settings will also apply to the rest of the SubliCraft blanks demonstrated here. But with all these set, go ahead and click Print. With the transfer printed, let’s go ahead and turn on our heat press, setting it to 60 seconds at 385 degrees Fahrenheit with medium pressure. Since these SubliCraft blanks are built with the same poly-rich material, it’ll be safe to use these settings for the rest of the items in this blog. You’ll also be able to press multiples of these items at once thanks to their small size. For the most part, the settings detailed here will suffice, but you can always add 5 seconds for each additional item in case your machine needs more time to fully press them.
Once your heat press reaches temperature, cover the lower platen with a sheet of parchment paper, then add your transfer on top facing up. Next, bring your items in with their white surface facing toward the printed images, then attach them in place with heat tape. Flip the attached items paper side up, cover them with another parchment sheet and press. When the time reaches zero, open your machine and allow the items to cool down for at least 20 seconds. Afterwards, quickly peel them off the transfer and they’ve now been sublimated with your own images. These square mats here are ready to bring your work on the go in a less traditional fashion, yet won’t go unnoticed with your best designs.
Next up are the SubliCraft car coasters. They may seem tiny, but they’re actually of a common size and still able to absorb excess liquid from anyone’s drink. And being that they’re sublimation blanks, they too can hold your own images in full color, particularly perfect for logos and emblems. The steps to customize these items are much the same as with the square mats, though you’ll need to keep one detail in mind. When preparing your image from scratch with the item’s imprint area, a top indent of about 1 by 3-hundred inches will cut a small portion of your image out when applied. You can also duplicate more of them on a single 8.5"x11" document thanks to their smaller size.
Otherwise, you can proceed with the same Sawgrass Print Manager settings, as well as the same heat press settings. Remember to always use fresh sheets of parchment paper when pressing another batch of items for sublimation. And once you’ve finished pressing your car coasters, they’re now ready to bring yours or another’s logo to anyone’s busy commute or long drive. And these are only two of the recent accessory blanks from the SubliCraft line. To see how the other items are customized, stay tuned for part two of this SubliCraft Showcase which will cover the seat belt wraps, luggage spotters, and coin purses.
If you’d like to share your customized sublimation accessories with us, plus a large community of heat transfer enthusiasts, you can always join our HeatPressNation Creators Facebook group. But to learn more about SubliCraft sublimation blanks, please visit us at HeatPressNation.com. For any questions, feel free to get in touch with a MyExpert representative at support.heatpressnation.com
