Dye sublimation is a dying process that uses heat to transfer ink to polyester fabrics. Dye sublimated fabric is completely safe to machine wash, but does experience mild pilling, which is easily brushed out with a soft bristle brush.

My hoodies and kigus are made using dye sublimated anti-pill fleece, with cotton or poly-cotton hood and pocket liners.

My plush toys are made using dye sublimated minky, and stuffed with polyfil.

Not as weird as you might think! Animal Shapes and I are partners and request to sit together at events, so that we can cover breaks for each other, and keep each other company!

I do my best to come prepared to each convention I attend. To do so, I keep a record of what items sell at each convention, how many, and how quickly. I compare those numbers to the attendance rate at each con, and calculate my stock based on that. It sounds complicated, but it’s not too bad.

There are a few things that make this a challenge: 

First: Space at a dealers’ table is limited; my most popular items are the highest priority both because they’re what people look for, and because they’re the most likely to sell. Items that don’t sell very well are replaced by new, or more popular designs. 

Second: New designs take time, and there’s never any guarantee that a new design will be popular enough to justify that investment (my ‘flop’ rate is around 35%). To mitigate this I typically work on new designs during my (unfortunately, very limited) free time.

Third: New designs are a gamble, and while they certainly pay off sometimes, from a business standpoint, swapping more than a few reliable products at a time is incredibly risky. 

That said, I do my best to have a few new items at each convention I attend

Everything available in my shop (with the exception of stickers and keychains) is made-to-order. This is because I don’t have the space to store every size and variety of every design.

Instead, I wait until someone has placed their order before ordering the fabric for it. Turnaround times with my supplier are typically between 1 and 2 weeks, and generally, I have several open orders at a time.

As much as possible, orders are sewn in the order in which they are received.

While I’m located in Canada, my fabric supplier is based in the USA. This means that when I’m purchasing materials, I’m paying for them in USD.

The majority of my clients are also based in the USA, so in order to keep my prices from fluctuating with the exchange rate, and to keep them stable for the majority of my clients, I’ve opted to keep my prices in USD.