With wedding season quickly approaching, many business owners are considering what personalization technology is the most profitable and practical for creating custom products to serve the wedding market.

How to Sublimate a Beverage Insulator For a Wedding Favor

By: Jackie Faeth, Johnson Plastics Plus, Marketing Coordinator

(Originally printed in the May/June 2024 issue of Insights.)

With wedding season quickly approaching, many business owners are considering what personalization technology is the most profitable and practical for creating custom products to serve the wedding market.

Interested in learning how to capture a small piece of the ever-growing and always-profitable wedding industry? You may be surprised to discover that our top recommendation for wedding-personalization technology is sublimation. While sublimation is commonly sought out for imprinting images on items like shirts and mugs, its versatility and profitability are often overlooked. In addition to adding images to polyester shirts, sublimation can be used on ceramic, wood, metal, faux leather, and even certain acrylics that have the right polyester coating. These materials come in the form of everything from ceramic ornaments and planters to drinkware and home decor, which makes sublimation a smart choice for weddings and beyond. Other key benefits of adding sublimation technology to your business model include a low cost of entry, low ink and supply costs, minimal maintenance tasks, and a simple print-and-press process that creates durable, vibrant prints in minutes.

The cost of entry into the world of sublimation could be as low as $1,000. All you need to get started is a sublimation printer, heat press, sublimation inks and paper, a computer, and a sublimation-ready blank.

The only maintenance required with a sublimation printer is changing the inks when they run low, emptying and replacing the waste-ink tank, and keeping the printer plugged in and turned on to prevent the aqueous inks from clogging and drying. So, if you’re just getting started with your business, sublimation is a great option as it doesn’t need to be run every day of the week.

The sublimation process itself is simple. As mentioned previously, it requires a sublimation printer, sublimation paper and inks, a heat press or convection oven, a computer and software for designing, and a polyester-coated blank that can withstand heat and pressure. Simply print your design on sublimation paper using your printer and inks, affix the print to your blank, apply heat and pressure, and your process is complete!

The scientific process of sublimation makes the image hard to scratch off because your print is in the material, not sitting on top of the surface. The bright, vibrant results also make this technology perfect for photographic and full-color images with pressing times as low as two minutes. These and other reasons make it perfect for bringing the couple’s dream from wedding vision to reality.

It’s important to acknowledge that, like any technology, sublimation does have its limitations. Two key aspects are that it can’t print white, and it works best on light or white backgrounds. However, since one of the main colors in most weddings is white, this may not be a problem as there will likely be a lot of light colors to print on.

Considering weddings as inspiration, sublimation users can create priceless wall hangings with photographs of the special day, custom centerpieces and signage, tumblers for bridal parties, and even wedding favors featuring the couple’s faces.

Let’s dive in to a step-by-step guide for creating a popular wedding favor: the beverage insulator!

1. Prepare Your Artwork: Design your artwork for sublimation printing using your preferred design software. Our sample artwork (as shown below) is a classic monogram celebrating the couple’s big day. Don’t forget to mirror your artwork, or you’ll end up with a backward print on your finished product.

2. Print Your Design: Use a sublimation-specific printer to print your design onto sublimation paper using sublimation ink. Typically, your design will be imported into print-management software. This type of software is designed to enhance efficiency, streamline workflows, and improve output quality in sublimation-printing environments. This software can help with color management, adjusting settings for different substrates, and job-cost estimation.

3. Prepare Your Blank for Pressing: Once you have your design printed on sublimation paper, use heat tape to securely attach it to the sublimation-ready blank. This beverage insulator with a polyester coating ensures a vibrant print transfer.

4. Press Your Design: Apply heat and pressure using a reliable heat press to initiate the sublimation process. Protect the heat-press platen with blowout paper to prevent any ink off-gassing and affecting future projects. To do this, place your blowout paper on the bottom heat platen followed by your blank product with the printed transfer out affixed to it. To also protect the top platen of your heat press, add another piece of blowout paper over the product and its transfer. Close the heat press and use the time, temperature, and pressure recommended in our tech tips (found in the downloads section on the product page on jpplus.com). Once the timer beeps, you’ll have a beautiful, decorated beverage insulator! You can also press more than one item at a time to increase efficiency and maximize profits.

5. Profit and Repeat: Admire your personalized beverage insulators and explore endless possibilities for future sublimation projects.

This beverage insulator is just one example of what you can create with sublimation out of hundreds of sublimation-ready products. The wedding market offers countless opportunities for personalization—from bridal showers and bachelor/bachelorette parties to wedding gifts and anniversaries. Specific inspiration ideas include tumblers for the bridal party, a customized planter, a honeymoon-fund collection box, table numbers and centerpieces, custom wedding favors, and photo panels to remember the special day.

With sublimation, you can create any design in minutes to match any wedding theme and add value (and make profit!) by creating a truly one-of-a-kind piece for your customers.