These belly bands are great fun to do, are larger than your normal folder or wallet, and don't have the typical manufacturing tolerances applied to them that we generally have to work to. This particular belly band was manufactured from a really nice 500um thick, silver polypropylene with a smooth sand/sand finish. Owing to the size of the print run, the stock needed to be brought in specially for the order. This particular grade comes from France, and can take just about a week to arrive from time of order.
During the wait for the material, we can get on with the pre-production processes, and make sure that everything is in order for the job proper. As is the norm, we want to proof the job, using the most cost effective manner available to us, and in this instance, we chose to output the design directly onto photo-realistic media in order to save time and money for the client. This method of proofing is fine for when you just need to check the overall size, impression, appearance etc, but not so good if you are looking to check colour balance and so forth. In those cases, it really has to be a wet proof.
Once the stock had been received, we then set about printing the job, and having started the order early on a Saturday morning,  the first two colours were down by the time the shift closed. This gave the stock plenty of time to harden and cool before we re-commenced printing on the Monday morning. The gloss finish UV curing inks we favour always give a tremendous lift to the job, and this one was no exception... the colours stood up really well and the cleanliness of the design on the silver material really worked.
We began the finishing process a couple of days later, having had to have waited for the tooling to be completed, and this also proved to be a relatively simple affair, with everything running sweetly whilst on the cutting press. Having de-slugged the waste part out, these finished items are packed 300 to a carton for despatch out to Schenker in The Netherlands, where they are assembled onto the laptop cases complete with the blister pack containing the retractable corded mouse!
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