HOW TO - MAKE GREAT ENAMEL PINS

Enamel Pins are everywhere these days. Maybe you want to flood the market and devalue all the enamel pins out there hastening the collapse of the market? Well here is the Underground Blend Guide to doing just that without being a tacky beotch!

1. NO you don't need to make everything into an enamel pin. If you are looking to make a quick buck off that thing the kids are all saying these days, they wont be saying it by the time you get your pins made, and they will no doubt make fun of you for being so 'last week' with that sad old shit. Just fuck off and do something else.

2. Make one design and have it filled with various color themes. Think 'Sunset', or 'Monotone', or maybe even 'Iron Man' style. This is called Colorways. It can allow you to make as few as 25 of each colorway, in a 200 pin run, and have more to offer with every Design you launch.

3. 'Hard Enamel' is garbage. No seriously, its trash, most factories substitute bad enamel for the good stuff when making 'Hard Enamel' pins. So they wont be a higher quality pin whatsoever. There is nothing 'Hard' about 'Hard Enamel' just like there is nothing 'Soft' about 'Soft Enamel'. These terms mean little to nothing other than how Filled your pins sunken areas will be. In fact 'Soft Enamel' will not only look better because of the way it catches the light in the corners of the design, your pin order will overall weight alot less! This will cut the shipping costs for you because enamel pins are heavy enough already.

4. Glow in the Dark pins MUST HAVE Epoxy Coating added on top! Glow Fills are sandy, rough, dry, and porous. Get Epoxy Coating added to these pins or they will collect dirt and stains on the surface. The Epoxy Coating also helps the Glow effect by gathering more light and shining brighter and more evenly when Glowing. Its true, we have made pins with and without Epoxy Coating and the difference is very noticeable. 

5. Get at least 2 Backing Posts for any pin you have made no matter the size. Without 2 Posts pins can spin and be really annoying. A single Posts are often placed in the middle of the pin back, which is hit or miss and results in pins with a Post below center causing the pin to flip upside down! We own pins that do this. It's horrible. Those pins are useless.

6. STOP MAKING LARGE PINS! Enamel Pins are supposed to be light, elegant, charming little devices. Making pins that are 2x2 inches and weight a ton, results in enamel pins that are unwearable beyond a heavy leather biker jacket. And those hep cats like patches! (beards get caught on the pins) So you're making of a massive heavy pin is a lost cause outside of pinning them to black velvet and putting them in small frames before selling them.

7. Use Wizard Pins. They are extremely professional and strive to get your order right the first time. We have utilized a dozen different factories, go betweens, and random buddies. We use Wizard Pins and never look back. "But I can go straight to a factory and get a cheaper price" you may squeal with glee. Cool for you. We like the ease of communication which Wizard Pins which provides confidence that the order will be correct with no language issues. And when something goes wrong with an order we don't have to worry about a factory thousands of miles away ghosting us with no regard for their reputation. If these things mean anything to you, we suggest you try Wizard Pins out. And NO they didn't pay us a dime to say this.


Posted By: Cultural Ambassador Gavriel Discordia

PS: The pin in the photo can be Bought Here: LINK

Artists Stronger Together

As Artists we can be islands to ourselves, or we can team up and form alliances that break through the social media fog.

The combined following of even 10 Artists can add up to 100,000-1 Million followers. Through synergistic posting of a collective blog each artist has access to, and with each artist posting the entire collectives work, cross exposure can benefit each of those artists 10 times over.

Optionally said artists can also move all their work through a single retail vendor. Drawing in each others web hits to create even more cross exposure for the entire collective. This has the advantage of also lifting the online retail operations chores off an Artists back freeing up their time for more productivity.

The primary retail hub can list items online and handle the orders. Artists can ship stock to the retailer for direct shipping, or hold items and Drop Ship them out when orders come through.

I have seen others do this already. From Sticker Crews to Designer Toy Customizers to web comic artists. By all means find such a collective, or team up with your associates and start one.

Underground Blend is such a blog and Discordia Culture Shop is such a Retail hub. Most of our partner Artists have ads on our websites and their sites cross back to us, creating yet another level of cross exposure.

Discordia Culture Shop also takes everyone's goods, in hand anyway, out to conventions and other pop-up engagements. Yet another method of public exposure for the entire collective.

info@discordiacultureshop.com

Posted By: Gavriel Discordia

HOW TO - KICKSTARTER TIPS - by Discordia Merchandising

Running a Kickstarter was fun. The DIY Spray Can Vinyl Toy was a success. We made goal in 9 days and went well over goal by the end of 30 days. We at Discordia Merchandising did a lot of research to prepare for our first Kickstarter project, and still ended up picking up a few tricks in the process. Here is a few things we learned.

Tips:

1. Study other Projects. Learn from others mistakes. Figure out what they did wrong, and avoid making their errors. Do your research. Download the KS App and watch those Ending Soon Projects, as well as Newest Projects for the Dos and Dont's.

2. Pay for as much of the preliminary expenses as possible. Don't expect Supporters to put down cash for something you won't invest in yourself. This will also likely put your item into production before your KS project even begins and speed up the fulfillment of your items to Supporters. Being able to provide the project items to Supporters in weeks instead of months or even a year or more later is a much better look. A Pre-Order Kickstarter is much more appealing to potential supporters.

3. Don't bill your Supporters for your production costs. Just let them pre-order the product alone. See #2. Sure MOST KS projects do exactly that, and does that make it ok? Not really. Any business writes off their expenses on their taxes. If you run a KS and get the public to give you those funds, that's not investment any more, that's income! If you write that off as anything else, that is technically tax fraud. And in the case of Supporters funding your project, be it Music, Toys, etc. that basically makes those Supporters your Producers and they technically own your production and the rights to it. Ask any Music Producer who owns Studio Recordings.

4. Offer Double, Triple, and Quadruple the items! Offer Wholesale! Supporters will likely want more than one of an item. Will want extras, for gifts to friends. Will want to stock your product in their shops and test sales. This will spawn future Wholesale orders. This is way better than expecting Supporters to make a pledge and then double it or triple it and message you about the extra items. And when they do go about doing just that, you will miss out on shipping costs for those additionals that will come out of your pocket in the end.

5. Don't count on the KS Community alone to make your project happen. If you don't have a pre-existing network of Supporters of your own, on social media, blog, or email list, you will fail! Around 50% of our Supporter base was KS Community, the other half we drew in from across the web by all those other means. Without our own pull, we would have gotten no where at all.

6. Participate in the KS Community. Take the time to Sign Up, Download the App, Connect your Facebook, and Follow other KS Community Members and projects in advance. Years in advance if possible. Support other projects, as much as you can, in advance as well. Other KS Community Members will get notifications of your support and take extra note of your project launch because of it. Give and Support. No one likes a leech.

7. Make your Goal as low as possible. Better to have a small success than a huge failure. We have seen many other projects asking for $15,000 and getting to $10,000, asking for $175,000 and getting to $100,000. Do your best to lower costs and get that goal down to the lowest level possible. Again See #2.

8. Make sure your item is available after the Kickstarter on a retail site. What good is all that exposure and success if you have no Retail follow through? Seriously, we've seen KS projects with cool items on offer, and then after the KS is over you can't even locate a shop that sells the excess production run, or even get the project director to answer a single email about getting any of it wholesale off them. WTF?

9. Network with Artists to offer additional Tie-In Items. We got down with 10 Custom Toy Artists from Carson Catlin to Patrick Wong to JCorp to offer Customized DIY Spray Can Vinyl Toys to Supporters. This helped us to reach more potential Supporters via those Artists informing their fan bases. And their Reward Tiers helped us to make our KS Goal quicker. FIY, we committed to providing them each with 90% of the asking price they set for their Custom Toys.

Maybe you don't agree with all of these points and sure they won't all fit your particular KS project. But hey, this was our experience. And we did pretty good. 

In fact, will be coming back with another Kickstarter DIY Toy very soon. One designed by a Designer Toy Award Nominee. 

So Stay Tuned! DIY Spray Can Vinyl Toy - RETAIL HERE: LINK

DIY Spray Can Vinyl Toy - WHOLESALE HERE: LINK

Posted By: Starr Mignon

Suckord VS Kozik - The Meeting of the Minds

Sucklord gets raked over the coals and schooled by the formidable force of punk rock nihilism tempered by corporate realities known as Frank Kozik.

All the while a mysteriously beautiful cat with tragic injuries keeps attacking the cameras and knocking the host and subject out of frame.

So be prepared for that, and a room tone marred by a lack of wall decor that causes a very distractable echo as you witness two very disparaging personalities knock skulls in a very entertaining way. And as usual pussy gets between them.

You might learn something, or you might end up even more confused. Ether way, its not like you have something better to do than this, so just admit that fact and witness this conflagration of brain matter.

ONLINE HERE: LINK

Posted By: Gavriel Discordia

Digital Privacy at the U.S Border - A New How-To Guide from EFF

Digital Privacy at the U.S Border: A New How-To Guide from EFF

EXCERPT: 

 

Protect Yourself While Traveling To and From the U.S.

 

San Francisco - Increasingly frequent and invasive searches at the U.S. border have raised questions for those of us who want to protect the private data on our computers, phones, and other digital devices. A new guide released today by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) gives travelers the facts they need in order to prepare for border crossings while protecting their digital information.

FULL ARTICLE HERE: LINK

**
Artist who find themselves traveling abroad may find this information useful when traveling with Digital Devices of all kinds.

For those who want to go in depth on the subject of digital security this looks like a great place to start. 101 Data Protection Tips: LINK

Posted By: Gavriel Discordia