Forums » Art & Creativity » Charms I made and a Question for Artists

eyyyy

I just discovered what are called Shrinkydinks and while i knew the name i didn't actually know what they were. Anyways, I have been making little key chains and I love doing it! Here are some I made.







Anyways, I want to try and sell these eventually. My husband and I are kind of arguing however. I say, its going to take a lot of work because I'll want to do pokemon. I have traced the vileplume and poliwhirl because A. they are for myself, and B. I was in a hurry to see if this whole process was going to work. I said to my husband, I don't think its legal for me to trace the outline of the pokemon (and color it by my own ability) and then shrink it and sell it. I have traced it, therefore I cannot sell it. My husband argues that its fine as long as I don't mass produce it. (At most I would make 5 of each keychain) I see his point, but I just want advice on what other people do for Cons. I will 99% end up drawing my own version and then tracing my own work, but want the input of others.

I'd agree that as a regular con-goer, I wouldn't want to buy artwork that looked like it might be traced. When I'm buying from tables in artist alley, I'm much more interested in purchasing works that are clearly original. That's why I'm shopping in the alley, after all!
That, and I know a lot of cons that do vetting would probably disallow you to sell them if they looked too close to the original copyrighted image. It'd really depend on if you were just selling at local small cons or taking them on the road to larger ones.
Your original art charms are really cute! I have been considering trying shrinkydinks and I think you just sold me on how adorable yours are.

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A con vendor

Thank you for your advice. We literally just went to our first con in September and it was a tiny one so we were testing the waters out. But I totally agree with you. It kind of defeats the purpose of being in the artist alley in the first place. My only worry is just time, but I'll manage. Our perler art is #1 priority, the keychains? Not that important. If I take my time, I'll get a good stock of my drawings to use to make a bunch.

They're super fun! I wanted to use recycled plastic, but I can't find any #6 plastics. Everything I have is #1 which doesn't do well at all. I just buy the sheets at my art store and it works a lot better, at least you can see the color

Hello! These are very cute. I've been doing cons professionally for 3 years, so I've had a while to learn the scene. ACK is exactly right about everything. Also, once you've sold at a con or two, consider joining the AANI facebook group!

Most of the charms I see in artist alleys are actually printed--Acorn Press is one of the charm-printing companies I see people recommend a lot. If this is something you want to invest in, you might consider making a couple designs and ordering a run. This will raise your production cost since I assume there are minimum order quantities, but it'll lower your production time significantly. Then, maybe you could sell your original Shrinkydink charms for a little more, or even take Shrinkydink charm commissions! Good luck!

I completely forgot to reply to this! Thank you so much for the information. If people actually buy the charms I am making it would be so much more beneficial to just order them online (And they would be better made too) rather than me coloring each one by hand every time.

I have started designing more charms. I am doing Pokemon... this is proving so difficult because you can only do so many poses before yours starts looking like everyone else's and you feel like you're copying At any rate... its going, I hope people will like them!