Some tips when ordering acrylic charms: (Patreon)

Since I just went through the process of ordering keychains for the first time I learned a few things, and I wish I had known them sooner! I ended up not getting the product I was looking for and had to re-order. I thought I would share some of the vocabulary I learned in the process in case any of you hope to make keychains in the future!

This will be short and sweet but here are a few things to keep in mind:

The way acrylic charms are printed is by laying the ink down on one side of the laser-cut acrylic, meaning in it's basic form, a flat acrylic charm's ink is exposed to the elements. For some reason I thought they sealed the design up inside of two pieces of plastic, but this isn't the case, unfortunately. If you want your design to be sealed up, which is ultimately ideal because the exposed ink design is prone to scratches, you need to order something additional called resin/epoxy. This will make one side of your design rounded instead of flat, which I prefer for charms. I've attached some pictures below of my charm which came without epoxy, vs. the charm of another artist which does have epoxy (the artist is komunhorangi on IG do give her a look!).

 In my defense I did try to order epoxy on my charms but didn't have the vocabulary for it and instead sent the lady an email that said something along the lines like "I need that extra acrylic stuff on one side that makes the design all bubbly", and this is how I ended up not getting epoxy on my charms. 

The other thing to keep in mind is one-sided vs. two-sided charms. For some reason I thought two sided was what you ordered when you wanted two different designs on each side of the charm, and that ordering one sided would give you the same design on both sides. Silly me, this isn't the case. One sided literally means your design only shows up on one side of the charm, which seems obvious now. One sided can be annoying when your charm flops back and forth and you have to keep switching the design to be face up. The other thing to note about one sided charms, especially if you want the epoxy to seal in the charm: typically when I have a charm with epoxy I view the rounded side as the front side of the charm. When you have a one sided charm the charm has a layer of acrylic, and then the ink on the back of it. The ink is printed so you see the design through the acrylic, meaning when you have the charm ink-exposed-face-up you will not see the design, just the white silhouette that is the back of the design. However this empty design side is where the epoxy will go, so keep that in mind if you order one sided with epoxy. It may seem weird that what is viewed as the "front" of your charm is totally blank. 

Now that I know all these terms and how charms are made I will never order improperly again and I hope that some of you can learn from my mistakes and make some lovely charms of your own!