Running a small art studio is not just about making prints. It is also about figuring out how to get them safely to your wall, whether you are in Toronto, Copenhagen, or Auckland. Over the past year we have shipped art throughout North America, Europe, and Australasia, and along the way we have had a crash course in packaging, couriers, tariffs, and patience.
Printing Partners and Packaging
We do not pack most orders ourselves. Instead, we work with professional print studios in different countries who specialize in shipping art. This means our work is printed close to where you live, which cuts down on shipping times, avoids half the customs problems, and uses packaging that is designed for fine art. The trade-off is that we have less direct control over the cardboard, tape, and filler, but what we gain is reliability. These studios have shipped thousands of prints before ours and know exactly how to keep them flat, unbent, and presentable when they arrive at your door.
That said, we still ask our partners to tweak things. If the packaging looks flimsy or the corners need reinforcing, we push for changes. It is not glamorous work, but it is the difference between your print showing up pristine versus looking like it fought a losing battle with the delivery truck.
Shipping: When Couriers Play Games
Even with the right packaging, couriers have a knack for making life interesting. They do not just break things; sometimes they lose them outright, or worse, let them sit untouched in a warehouse for weeks for no reason anyone can explain. Every studio has horror stories, and now we have our share too. We have seen parcels take the long way around the continent, looping through three hubs before arriving two towns over.
This is why we are upfront in posts like How We Package Your Art Prints and Behind the Scenes: How We Pack Your Greeting Cards. Shipping is never 100% foolproof. We stay on top of tracking, chase down missing boxes, and replace anything that truly vanishes. But when your order shows up after a mystery detour, know that we were just as annoyed as you while it was wandering the courier labyrinth.
Tariffs: The Real Headache
The single biggest headache this past year has been tariffs. In particular, new U.S. rules that suddenly slapped extra fees on certain categories of paper goods, including art prints and greeting cards. If you are an American customer, you may have seen these costs show up at checkout in the form of higher duties or shipping surcharges. None of this comes from us. It is the result of political decisions made far away, and it directly hits small studios like ours.
To soften the blow, we work with multiple print studios, currently in the U.S., the U.K., and continental Europe, so that fewer packages have to cross borders in the first place. Printing closer to you helps reduce both delivery time and the risk of tariffs being added on top. And we are always scouting for additional partners, so that if one country changes the rules again, we are not stuck leaving customers empty-handed.
For more context, check our updates: Shipping Update for Our U.S. Customers and its sequel Part 2: Tariff Boogaloo.
The People on the Other End
The thing that makes all of this worth it is the people. We get messages from Denmark, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, India, and even China. Sometimes with folks apologizing for even asking if we will ship to them. The answer is yes, almost always, though sometimes it comes with a caveat about a temporary tariff or delay. What surprised us most is how much people care about supporting a small studio halfway across the world. When someone writes to say their print just arrived and is already on the wall, it makes the hours spent wrestling with couriers or updating tariff tables fade away.
What Ships Where
Not every product can go everywhere. Our frames only ship to the U.S. and Canada right now, because sending them further afield makes costs and breakage risks climb too high. Prints and cards, though, travel almost everywhere we ship. That means someone in Dublin can hang the same artwork as someone in Vancouver, even if the framing options differ. For more on frames, see Framing Matters: Choosing the Right Frame for Your Art.
The Bottom Line
A year of shipping has taught us that logistics are messy. Couriers lose packages, tariffs appear overnight, and sometimes things take longer than they should. But it has also taught us that people value art enough to put up with all of that, and that is what keeps us going.
So if your package ever takes the scenic route, know that we are just as frustrated as you. We are also proud that our art has now found homes across three continents, thousands of kilometers from where it started. That little print in your living room is the happy ending to a long, complicated journey, and it makes every headache along the way worth it.