Pricing Handmade Christmas Ornaments

Lazertran Inkjet waterslide decals are a bit pricey. If you’re making your ornaments as gifts, you’re probably only making a few so cost isn’t a big issue.

However, if you’re making these ornaments for sale, you need to carefully factor in all of your costs or this project may end up costing you money!

I’ve not seen Lazertran decals in any store, so I was forced to mail order them. The decals were about $18 for a pack of 10 sheets and the shipping and handling was $8! I wanted them in a hurry so I went ahead and ordered.

Next time, I’ll order several packs or wait until I need some other art supplies so I can amortize the high S&H over multiple projects.

The large plastic ornaments I used cost about $1.50 each. I figure I can get 3 ornament decals from each Lazertran sheet. I’ve estimated from experience that I can print an average 680 pages per ink cartridge.

My ink cost per project that prints three projects per page would normally be $0.64 divided by 3. However, I’m printing in draft mode, so I divided by 5. It’s just a guesstimate.

My materials costs then come to $2.50. However this doesn’t consider several important costs.

I will have some waste. Every page I print causes wear and tear of my computer and printer. As well, I use pretty expensive software to make the designs and I spent a good deal of time designing the graphics.

Because I can’t easily quantify all of these costs, I typically shoot for a profit margin of at least 75% which means I would need to sell these ornaments for $10 or more.

One final note: if you are making these ornaments for sale, you may not use any digital design products sold for consumer use, such as the Scrap Girls label and frame I used in my example.

You need to create your own graphics or purchase products licensed for commercial use. Scrap Girls offers many beautiful commercial use products.

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