✨ 10 Sublimation Skills to Instantly Make You a Better Crafter ✨

if you love sublimation but you're always looking to improve your skills make sure to stick around because in this video I'm going to give you 10 or more skills that's going to instantly make you better at sublimation if you like all things sublimation and crafting make sure to like this video subscribe to our Channel and hit that Bell notification so that you can be notified every time we get crafty let's go ahead and jump right into it the first thing that I feel like a lot of people do not do especially those that are new to sublimation is you don't print enough now hear me out the reason that I say that is because sublimation printers whether they are converted sublimation printers or printers that are already set up for sublimation they still have a tendency of getting clogged very easily so that's why I think it is so important that we print at least once a week if not more even if you don't plan on pressing anything that week now I don't know if you're aware of this but you can pre-print designs and save them for months at a time plus if you do that you've already got half the work done so when it comes time to make something you have these designs that you can choose from and all you have to do is pick them out and press them onto your blank now the next thing that I want to talk about is specifically about your blanks and that is prepressing your blanks now you may already do this but I want to give you the reason behind why we pre-press our blanks and that is because moisture moisture can really ruin your sublimation project so if you can I highly suggest you always prepress your blank no matter what type of material what that is going to do is the heat from your press is just going to make that moisture that has been trapped evaporate and it's going to give you the best press possible speaking of pressing we always need to make sure we do not over press or overheat our images here is an example of an image that has been overheated and over pressed and we'll go overhead so you can see it here you can see it was such a high temperature that it kind of burnt the material but not only that you see the ghosting and how fuzzy it is this is definitely something we want to try to avoid so most sublimation blanks you are going to press between 380 or 385 to 400 now there are other materials that you may have to do over 400 but our range sublimation is going to be between 380 to 400° the next tip that I have for you guys is to make sure that you tape your designs properly if you're not aware of how sublimation Works how it works is you have your sublimation image you put it onto your blank and you tape it and the pressure and the heat then takes this special sublimation ink it turns it into a gas and then that gas attaches to the polymers that are on or in your blank so it goes from a solid state to a gas back to a solid and what's so important about taping your images onto surfaces especially curved surfaces like this is because if it is not really tied up against that surface that gas can then escape and really cause like fuzzy effect on your image so let's go overhead and let me show you a good example of taping and one that could be improved so here you can see on the bottom of the cup how there is tape all the way around and there are no gaps from this image to the cup that is a great example of how it should be taped now this is taped okay if it were me I would go ahead and add another piece of tape down the seam but this is definitely something you want to avoid now it is pretty tight around there but if I were doing this especially in a convection oven and not in a heat press or not in a Tumblr press I would tape this as well just just to make sure that I know my image is going to come out super crisp another thing that we absolutely love here at makers going to learn are reusable silicone wraps that you can also put around your tumblers your cups and so many other things and what it does is it creates a really tight barrier on the outside of your tumbler making sure that that image stays up really close to the tumbler and gives you an amazing result now we have have used shrink wrap in the past and for the longest time we really didn't love that and we got some really good results using shrink wrap however I feel like they're not all made equal because the last few times we have used shrink wrap they melt and burn and we've just not got the best results and we have found that silicone is one of those that you can buy it once reuse it over and over and you're always going to get an amazing result using this type of wrap another thing that you can do to really ensure that your printed image stays on your blank really well is to use a sublimation adhesive spray now this specific one is the alakim ecomist what you're going to do is you are going to take this you're going to make sure you shake it up really well you're going to take your image and you're going to give it a light spray now this stuff is sticky so if you do not want it on your surfaces or on your floors I would suggest doing it outside it's okay to let it dry down and get tacky for a few seconds that's actually probably the way that you should and then from there you could adhere that onto your surface whether it be some type of garment or a tumbler or a hard surface this works really well on all surfaces that we have found now one thing that people do always ask us is does this leave a sticky residue on your blank no it does not what happens is the heat kind of disintegrates the adhesive so it breaks it down and it does not leave a sticky residue that we have found so we really really love this sublimation adhesive spray if you're not the best at keeping things taped down maybe you have issues with your hands or arthritis this is a really really good alternative for that now the next couple tips that I have for you are speaking about images that we are going to press on our blanks and the first tip about images is making sure you have enough contrast on your image to make it pop on whatever you are pressing it on now we're going to go to the share screen and I'm going to show you an example of an image that does not have a lot of contrast and how you can change that but before we go into our share screen I want to make sure you all are aware that this is going to be based on actual photos that have people in them that's where you can really manipulate and bump up the contrast if you are just pulling an image from maker going to learn or maker going to sublimate those images should be great and have plenty of contrast but if you are wanting to sublimate an actual photo I'm going to show you a quick trick on how you can increase the contrast to make sure that it pops off of your blank here you can see we have a beautiful image of taner and Courtney and I love the colors but if we go to press this it is not going to show up really well so we're going to have to change the contrast and increase the contrast on this image to really make it pop and how you're going to do that is what we've done is we've opened this up in canva you can do this in the free version of canva but what you're going to do is you're going to upload your photo add it to your page and then from there you're going to click these two arrows and you are going to go to adjust here is where you can adjust your image now you can adjust the temperature I would suggest not messing with that one but we want to come down here to the brightness and contrast so if you wanted to you can increase the broadness if it is a darker photo but the contrast is really what we want and we want to bump up the contrast and you can see how now these colors are starting to pop off the page rather than at when they are at zero they look a little bit dull I still think it's a beautiful picture but when we're pressing we do have to bump up that contrast to make those colors really pop now you can play around with the highlights and the shadows and things like that but the contrast is is going to be the main thing when it comes to making those colors and that image pop you can also come down here to the saturation and if you still feel like the colors aren't popping as much you can bump up the saturation a little you just have to be very careful because the skin tone if you bump up the saturation skin tone can then become red so you just need to be careful and not put too much saturation into your image because you do not want them you do not want the people in your image to to look red the next tip that I have for you is making sure that we have super Crisp Images now whether this is an image that you bought from someone to use for sublimation or your own image that you are using we want to make sure that our images have at least 300 DPI or more and what DPI means is dots per inch so you want to have 300 dots per inch at least to make sure that you have a really really crisp image and the way that we're going to get that especially if you are downloading from canva is once you go to share and download you are going to change it from PNG to PDF print and you are going to you can use RGB but you're going to be best to change it to cmk the only thing is when you change it to CMYK you do have to have canva Pro for that but that color profile is going to match the color profile of your printer so that's going to make sure that the colors are correct and making sure you download it as a PDF is going to give you that 300 DPI that we are looking for now most images that are already set up for sublimation that you either purchase or any image that you find in the makers going to sublate course is already going to be 300 DPI so this is mainly going to be for photos that we download so you really need to make sure that we download it properly once you have chosen that you are going to select download and then that will be ready to print the next tip that I have for you guys is thinking ahead now this may seem a little silly but hear me out sublimation paper is not super cheap so if we're thinking ahead and making sure we fill up the whole piece of paper with absolutely every inch that we can use to press on different items that is going to really step up your sublimation game like I said earlier you can pre-print sublimation images and store them for months at a time as long as you store them in a very dry area you do not want these to have lots of moisture on them because that will change the quality of the image but making sure we fill up a whole page and not wasting sheets of sublimation paper is going to really help you and step up your game the next tip that I have for you is going to be one that is kind of very specific for neoprene items now neoprene items are great blanks to celebrate on for example this is a neoprene lunchbox and we have a cute little name to go on the front of this however if I were to just go press this like this once we take that off the press what's going to happen and we'll go over ahead to show you what is going to happen is even if I were to let's say cut this edge off we're going to have an indention of where the edge of this paper was I don't know why but that's always what happens so if you are pressing especially on neoprene what we suggest you doing is ripping the edges of your print so you can see how that feathers the edge of that paper and makes it a lot softer now when if you do this you want to make sure you give yourself enough room to rip the edges but you do want to definitely rip those edges and what that is going to do is it is going to prevent those harsh lines from happening from staying on your neoprene blank now the very last tip that I have for you guys today is to use a pressing pillow for a couple different instances instance number one is if you have an auto press and you cannot manually adjust your pressure pressing pillows come in super super handy if you need something that has a little extra pressure you can add that to the base of your auto press and it is going to make that press just a little bit tighter on your blank um to make sure that you have a perfect result or the second instance that you may need a pressing pillow is if you have a fabric or some type of material that has a little bit of a curved or textured surface so for example we have this wa waffle knit dish towel here that is sublimatable but if I were to sublimate this I would probably use a pressing pillow just to help that image really get down in the divots of this waffle net another example is if you are pressing tiles I highly suggest you use a pressing pillow if you are wanting to camate on tiles as well and what that does is it just gets that image around the curved edges of the tiles and makes it look extremely professional I hope you guys have enjoyed all the tips and tricks today I definitely want you guys to leave me a comment down below let me know which one you liked the best or if there was a tip or trick that we did not have in this video that you feel like made you a better sublimation crafter leave that down below we love sharing information so we want to make sure that you comment and let us know what your thoughts are once again if you've not already make sure to like this video subscribe subribe to our Channel and if you're interested in learning more about sublimation or you haven't started your sublimation Journey yet but you want to know what it's all about make sure to click that first link down below we do have makers going to sublimate which is a course that if you purchase you get lifetime access to where we're going to walk you through choosing what printer you want all the way through becoming a sublimation Pro if you enjoyed this sublation video make sure to check this one out next