When to order so it arrives in time

Nothing here sits in a warehouse waiting to be picked. Prints are made when you order them, which is better for the work and adds a few days at the front that most shops don’t have. If you are ordering against a date — a birthday, a wedding, Christmas, someone moving out — here is how to work out when to press the button.

The two numbers

Everything comes down to these, and both are in the shipping policy:

• 2–5 business days to print and pack, before anything is dispatched.
• 3–7 business days in the post within Australia. 7–21 everywhere else.

Put together, start to finish:

Where it’s going	Allow, in business days
Australia	5 to 12
Everywhere else	9 to 26

Business days, not days. A fortnight on the calendar is ten business days, so the gap between the two is bigger than it looks.

How to count back from a date

1. Write down the day it needs to arrive — not the day of the event. A day or two early is the point.
2. Count back the top of the range for where it’s going: 12 business days for Australia, 26 for anywhere else.
3. Skip weekends and public holidays as you count. They are not business days at either end — not at the lab, not at the post office.
4. Take off another three or four days. Not because anything is likely to go wrong, but because a deadline with no slack in it is not really a deadline.

That lands you on an order-by date you can actually trust. For an Australian address that usually works out somewhere around three weeks ahead; for an overseas one, closer to six or seven.

Christmas, and other busy times

December is the one month of the year when the post is reliably slower than its own estimates, and the same is true in the week or two before Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. Use the method above, then add a week.

In practice that means an overseas Christmas gift wants ordering in the first half of November, and an Australian one by the first week of December. Australia Post also publish their own cut-off dates each year, usually some time in November — if the parcel has a long domestic trip ahead of it, metro to remote or right across the country, it is worth checking theirs alongside this.

If you are working to a date and not sure you will make it, email hello@jellybelly.art and ask. I would rather tell you it is tight than have it turn up the day after.

Original paintings need longer

Originals are packed flat and posted insured from the studio, and there is only ever one of each. If a print goes astray it gets reprinted; if an original does, there is no second one. So give an original an extra week on top of whatever the method above gives you — the time is there to sort out a problem, not to make the painting.

There is a second reason to decide early. Once an original sells it is gone, and the ones that go, go quickly.

Commissions are a different thing entirely

A commission is painted to your brief, in a queue, and oil needs drying time between layers. It is measured in weeks to months rather than days, and it cannot be rushed into a gap. If you are hoping for one by a particular date, ask well ahead and I will tell you honestly whether it is possible. The commissions page has how it works.

Framing adds a week, at least

Everything is sent unframed. If you want it framed before it changes hands, that is another trip — a few days if you are buying an off-the-shelf frame, a week or two if a framer is cutting a mat. Order earlier than your order-by date rather than on it. The framing guide covers both routes.

Things that quietly cost you days

• Weekend and public holiday orders start their clock on the next business day. A Sunday-night order is a Monday order.
• A wrong address is the big one. A parcel that comes back because nobody could take delivery will not make the date on the second attempt. Check it before you pay.
• Prints and originals ordered together are packed differently and often travel separately, at no extra cost. If they are gifts for different people, that can be useful.
• A set is one parcel with one shipping charge, so it is no slower than a single print.

If you have already left it too late

Order it anyway, and hand the gift over as something that is on its way. Write the piece’s name on a card with a line about why you chose it, and say roughly when it is expected. It lands better than it sounds — the person gets something to look forward to rather than something to unwrap and forget.

How to give an unframed print as a gift has a section on exactly this, including what to write.

Still choosing?

The gift guide is organised by who you are buying for, and the size guide settles A5 versus A4 versus A3. Or go straight to the prints, the sets or the originals.