Discover Mythical Prints
Dive Into a World of 3D Wonders
Lisa Patrick
The Ashland Beacon
When Melissa Wellman’s son, Will, was not quite six years old, he knew the one thing he wanted for Christmas was a 3D printer. Knowing he wasn’t ready for one, Wellman’s stepfather bought one for Christmas as a gift for both Melissa and Will. Together they both fell in love with the limitless creations they could dream up. What started as a cool Christmas present quickly turned into a brisk little business that helps Wellman and her family make ends meet so she can stay home with her children.
Knowing that 3D printers offer a limitless variety of things you can print Wellman mainly focuses on printing toys with her son. Initially, Wellman would just print stuff that her children requested but then that turned into Wellman’s son Will asking her to print stuff for his friends. That’s when it hit her … “Hey, I bet I can sell some of this stuff.” recalled Wellman. Wellman decided to test the waters and so she started selling items on her personal Facebook and on Facebook’s marketplace.
Having recently become a single mother, she started her official business, Mythical Prints, in March of 2024. Wellman knew that regular employment just wouldn’t work for her anymore because she felt that her children had experienced enough change in their lives and needed to have her home full time. After some success selling a few of her 3D printed creations on Facebook, Wellman started her own business page. Wellman shared that, “the success of the business page let me have financial success and I was able to work from home while still spending quality time with my children making memories.”
Merging business and family together is something Wellman prides herself on. In addition to taking care of her own two children, Wellman also keeps her nephew, Braxton, and is grateful that she can be home to take care of him so that her sister need not find day care or leave him with strangers. Her sister is also due to have a baby girl in September, so she’ll have another child to add to her madhouse along with her five dogs.
Mythical Prints is a home-based business that has enabled her to buy another printer. Wellman shared that she almost always has both printers going through both the day and night. Wellman love the fact that she is not completely tied to her house. Once she gets everything loaded up on the printers, she can just set it to print and then take her kids out to do something fun or just to run errands.
The downside to that though, is that, sometimes, the printer messes up and she’ll come back to find something that she is unable to use or sell. She also runs the printer while she sleeps. Some of her items take seven or more hours to make so she sets the printer and goes to bed then gets up in the morning to start all over. She laughingly commented, “I go to sleep with this music.”
Wellman has recently started participating in some vendor events. The Animal Expo was her first one and she sold a lot of snakes, scorpions, ferrets, and other printed animals. The next one she sold things like axolotls, dragons, Buzz, Woody, Stitch, and other characters. She shared that, “the events have been fairly successful.” One of the things she likes about doing vendor events is being able to take her children to the events with her and not have to worry about finding a babysitter.
The Mythical Prints logo is a dragon but after she had all her logos and business cards printed, she realized that she should have made it an axolotl because she owns one and she might have been able to take it with her to some of the indoor vendor events.
Each mythical toy takes between one and a half hours to eight hours to create on the 3D printers. “The cobra is probably the one that takes the longest. It takes the full eight hours to complete. Even though it’s smaller than the dragons, it has more detail. The crystal dragon also takes eight hours.” explained Wellman. The other dragons, ferrets, and other popular animals take about seven hours. The small ponies and sea turtles each take about an hour and a half. Buzz Lightyear takes five hours to print while Woody takes four. Wellman said that most of her creations print inside a six-to-seven-hour window.
She has creations sized small, medium, and large and she tries to make them affordable for everyone. She comes up with prices for her items by thinking to herself … “what would I be willing to pay?” She then prices her stuff accordingly. The price of the item depends on how much time she has in it and how much the materials cost. Colored filaments cost more than black and the glow in the dark filaments, which Wellman explained “are the most expensive things for me to create.”
Prices for Wellman’s creations start at five dollars and go up to $20. Wellman noted that she would like to stay at that price point for as long as she can. She finds that the ten-dollar items sell the most, but she sells plenty of the others too. “I have been luckily to have such great customers that are always supportive.” admitted Wellman. For Wellman, providing top notch customer service is a top priority. “I try my best to always provide the best customer service I can and assist all of my customers with any questions they might have.” stated Wellman.
Mythical Prints is always dreaming up something new and exciting. Be sure to check out the Mythical Prints Facebook page so you can stay up to date on all of Wellman’s future creations. Wellman can be reached atmelissa.bchs2011W@gmail.com.
Comentarios