How to Make your Own Memo pads

Hey Friends,

I love making new items, specifically, if I can afford to get them manufactured – it’s always particularly satisfying to send it off, then waiting for it to arrive to you. I got my first taste in my first real job outside of college – I got to design shirts, medals and so much more for company races. It was never dull and I kept several of the shirts and a few of the more complex medals. It was my first taste of it and it’s the best drug. I highly recommend it.

To make anything, you need to start with an idea, today I wanted to discuss memo pads because I’ve been playing with them, notepads, and journals. I am so excited to be doing some journals at home – they are sorta test to see if they work – since it’s a lot of money to throw into something you’ll unsure of.

But this isn’t about them, yet anyway.

 

Making memo pads at home

You can see this a lot on Youtube, people print the sheets in bulk, cut them, and will glue them at home (by pressing them). This is a great margin if you are starting out, testing concepts will sell or are lucky enough to have a huge printer at home (cost-effective).

I think this is more labor-intensive than I personally like, however, I do like to concept test at home so I can see doing this once or twice. Cutting that many pages would be hard without an industrial cutter. I also want my memo’s to be sticky, preferably.

 

Printing on Post-its

The other option I’ve been trying and have a template for is printing on post-it notes. They make white notes, and if you set up a template you can print on them. You can see mine here. It really is as simple as loading up a word or photoshop document, putting the squares on there, and filling it with your designs or notes. You need to know how your paper goes through, and if you are printing a full-color design you probably want to go with the white notes.

 

Manufacturing

Finally, you can get them manufactured, but it will require money to toss at it. I tend to go to Uprinting for my inserts, they are easy to order and pretty quick. I could get cheaper quotes on Alibab probably but it’s not a complicated product so I stick with the basics. I’ve also not been able to get the same results locally – as most local printers use a Xerox system to print and the way they lay colors is different (makes the paper glossy or shiny) vs a more matte texture – which I want.

So just some quick looking around shows me Vistaprint is way better. $15 for 5 stick pads (50 sheets, 3×3). So probably not as bad as you thought. Uprinting makes you do a minimal of 250, but with Vista, you can kinda test the waters. It’s good to shop around, and no I don’t like using big box websites to print – you can check local for a lot of things, but not everything works because of restrictions of what can be done or your budget. If Vista print can do you a bunch of sticky memo pads for a great price for you, you can use your time to make more new products!

 

 

If you are thinking about starting a new store or selling your art on products I 10/10 think you should do it. There is always a market for it, it takes work to build an audience, don’t get me wrong but if you get it out there and work on it, you’ll find your group eventually. It’s not too saturated, I promise. Start the thing.