Day 35 - Lost in the Sea of Colour Profiles and Endless Search for Perfection

Day 35. I actually had to go back to my diary and count the days. Time shows no mercy lately; if there were an award for using up hours too fast, I’d take first place.

Our Etsy store opened exactly one month ago, and by now, it was meant to be bursting with life. Instead, it stares at me with empty eyes. Reality is complicated. My imaginary life? Effortless. Morning robusta brews perfect plans—the struggle only begins when trying to drag them into reality.

To cut a long story short: we had our three beautiful beetle illustrations ready for Print-on-Demand through Printify. But we want global reach and US-only printing would kill it with slow shipping and steep delivery fees.

Then, Prodigi appeared like a gift—printing centres worldwide, plus ICC colour profiles for pro accuracy—my perfectionist dream. The thought of professional colour management excited me so much that I did the classic "overexcited creator" move: I skipped the instructions.

I completely destroyed the colours on our first print sample by embedding the fancy paper profiles into our print file. The results? Disastrous. One of the beetles came out pitch black and that beautiful, vintage sepia background? A shade of sickly yellow.

After a late-night "speed course" in colour profiles, PDF creation, and bleed margins, the reality set in. When the first Giclée art print arrived, I genuinely struggled to hold back tears. I had put all my hope into this sample; a success meant a "green light" to flood our Etsy and website store with beetles, butterflies, and botanicals. Instead, I was met with more testing and more waiting.

But I’m learning to be grateful for the mess-ups. By "ruining" those colours, I learned more about the technical printing process in one night than I have in years. That knowledge is the foundation for everything we build next. So, thank you, Universe, for the tough love.

I resubmitted the new samples this morning at 1:26 AM—sleep impossible until the mission was accomplished.

I promise to let you know the moment the new Lucane Nbr.1 Beetle Plate lands in the store.

Hopefully, this time, the "tangible world" finally matches the dream.

Our first giclée art print sample of Lucane Nbr.1 Plate above (the colours look much worse in real life)