Our first step in making a custom order is creating a sketch. Our sketch is our best representation of what the final product will look like, before we get to the felt.
In our last post about the Squshify My Pet 2015 contest, we showed you all 3 of the sketches we did for the winning pets. The winners were given the sketches and we asked for their feedback. Two out of the three sketches were approved.
For our 1st place winner's sketch we got this feedback :
"The only thing I can think of for adjustment is maybe can her eye be more squinty? She kind of has this look she does all the time where she ends up looking really pleased with herself."
We also got this additional photo that really gave us an awesome reference for what our 1st place winner was looking for.
That is the kind of feedback we love, especially with the additional clarifying photo! It was clear and detailed and let us know exactly how we could improve the sketch. You know your pet best and we want our custom pet work to capture your pet as best we can so feedback is very important to help us achieve that.
Here's our updated sketch! Making the change to the eye was something we could definitely do. This sketch was approved and now we'll be starting on the felt portrait.
We are always happy to make changes to the sketch, as long as it is something we can then do within the limits of felt. With the portraits we can do a lot more elaborate and detailed things with the felt, especially since the final product will be in a frame and handled a lot less than an ornament.
Our 2nd and 3rd place winners are getting special prints of their pets. We fancied up the sketches from the last post and sent them off to be printed much nicer that we could ever print on our home printer.
Now the examples we've been discussing have all been winners in a contest so there has been no talk of price. If this was an actual custom order, this would be the point in time were we discuss the price.
Our prices are based on the complexity of what we are making. Revisions to the sketch can greatly alter the price if they add a lot of extra details, so we don't give prices until a sketch is final and everyone is agreed on it. We can give a somewhat ball park figure, based on the request and the photos, based on things we worked on the past.
Once the sketch is final and price has been discussed and agreed upon we set up a custom listing for your order. Once custom listings are purchased we get started on them and they typically take 1-2 weeks before they are ready to ship. When we set up a custom listing we always let you know what our expected turn around time for custom orders currently is.
We hope this makes our custom order process more clear. Feel free to ask any questions you still might have about custom orders! Next we'll be sharing what the grand prize winner's portrait looked like! We'll be waiting until our winner receives it before sharing here.