About Bombay Print Lab
We make the gift you finish yourself.
Send us a photograph of people you love. We sculpt them, print them small enough to hold, and post the whole thing to you white and unpainted, with every colour already mixed and numbered.
The last step is the one we deliberately leave for you.
13–14 cm
tall, on a marble-finish pedestal
8 to 20+
pots, however many yours needs
7–13 days
free delivery, anywhere in India
₹0
until you approve the likeness
What we actually do
A photograph of your parents on their anniversary is a lovely thing, and it lives on a phone with nine thousand others. We take one of those photographs and turn it into something with weight to it: a figurine of the people in it, roughly the height of a coffee mug, printed one at a time.
It arrives white. That isn't a corner we cut, it's the reason the whole thing exists. A finished ornament is something you were sent. A figurine you painted at your own table, badly in one spot and beautifully in another, is an evening you spent with someone, and it earns its place on the shelf in a way a bought object never quite manages.
So the box does all the tedious work and leaves you the good part. The colours are mixed for your figurine before they are poured, each pot is numbered, and the guide inside tells you where every number belongs. There is nothing to prepare, nothing to buy alongside it, and nothing to get wrong.
Nobody remembers what you bought them.
They remember the night the four of you argued about whether the shirt was closer to pot 07 or pot 09. That is the thing we are actually selling, and the figurine is how it gets started.
How one gets made
From a photo on your phone to a box on your table, in five steps.
01
You send us a photo
One clear photo is enough. We check it before anything else happens: how many people are in it, whether the light is playing fair, whether a pet snuck into the frame. If the photo won't make a good figurine, we say so then and there instead of after you've paid.
02
You see it before it exists
We sculpt a coloured preview of your figurine and show it to you. If the beard is wrong or it just isn't quite them, ask again. Nothing goes near a printer at this stage, and nothing is charged.
03
You approve, and only then pay
This is the part most people find strange, and it's the part we're proudest of. You look at your figurine first. If it isn't unmistakably the person you love, you haven't spent a rupee.
04
We print it, clean it, prime it twice
This is where two or three days quietly go. Your figurine is 3D-printed in high-quality resin in white, then washed and cured before the supports come off and any seam gets cleaned up. Resin holds detail beautifully but its surface is glassy, so it gets a two-coat primer pass rather than one, because paint straight onto bare resin doesn't hold. Meanwhile its colours are matched against our real paint stock and mixed by hand into numbered pots, and the guide is printed to match. Nobody else's kit has your exact set.
05
It arrives, and the rest is yours
One box lands at your door, usually inside 7–13 business days, free anywhere in India, with WhatsApp updates along the way. Clear the table, put the good light on, and take the evening.
Everything that's in the box
Lift the lid and you have everything. Nothing else to order, nothing to prepare.
The figurine
13–14 cm tall, 3D-printed to order in high-quality resin in white and taken through our two-coat primer process, ready for paint, standing on a white marble-finish pedestal that's always included. Up to four people in one order, plus a pet.
Numbered paint pots
However many your figurine actually takes, which might be eight pots or might be twenty. They're mixed to its own palette rather than picked off a shelf, and each pot wears a number that reappears on the guide wherever that colour belongs.
A pot of clear varnish
For the final coat, a day or so after the colour dries. It goes on looking milky and dries completely clear, which is alarming the first time and then very satisfying.
Brushes
Included, so there's nothing to buy before you start. The figurine comes already primed, so you can open the box and go straight to the first colour.
A guide printed for yours alone
A small folded booklet with a paint map of your figurine on one page and the colour legend facing it. Every numbered dot on the map points at the exact place its pot belongs.
A QR code to the walkthrough
Prefer a screen to paper? Scan it and paint one colour per screen on your phone, with a highlighted image of exactly where that colour goes. It remembers where you stopped.
Your figurine's palette
Your own set, numbered in the order you'll use them
Colours are mixed to suit the photo you sent, so a kit for a red saree and a kit for a navy suit look nothing alike, and they rarely hold the same number of pots. A simple figurine might need eight. A busy one with patterned clothes and a pet can run past twenty. The swatches below are only the idea of it, not your actual set.
The fussy bits nobody asked for
Some of what goes into a kit is invisible by the time it reaches you. We think it's the most interesting part, so here it is anyway.
Paint mixing
Two paints at 50/50 don't make the colour in between
A strong pigment bullies a weak one, so equal spoonfuls give you a lopsided result. Our matching runs in a colour space built around how eyes actually perceive difference, simulates how the pigments behave when they meet, and weights each paint by its tinting strength. It also follows a painter's rules: no black in a light saturated colour, a white base under pale tones, no cold paint sneaking into a warm mix.
The guide
Built from your figurine's own pixels
The map isn't drawn by hand or guessed at. Your figurine's image is read directly to find each distinct area of colour and where its largest patch sits, and that's where the numbered dot goes. A colour covering a lot of ground, like a black used on hair and shoes and a belt, gets a second pot so you don't run dry halfway.
Standing up
Three or more people come as separate pieces
When two bodies lean together in a photo, the hands vanish where they meet, and a hand that has merged into a sleeve prints as a blob. So we check the photo first. If everyone's hands are clearly visible, they can stand joined. Otherwise each person becomes their own free-standing figure with the pose kept intact, which paints better anyway.
Who we are
Bombay Print Lab is a small studio just outside Mumbai. Small in the literal sense: the printers are ours and they run in the same room where the paint gets mixed, one desk over from where the boxes are packed.
That size is a constraint and we like it. It means somebody looks at your photograph before your figurine is made, and looks at your figurine before it goes in a box. When you message the WhatsApp number, you reach one of us rather than a ticket queue with a reference number.
We make one thing and we'd rather make it properly than make ten things adequately. Everything on this site, down to the numbers on the pots, exists so that the evening you spend painting is a good one.
painting mum and dad
pot 04, halfway done
What we hold ourselves to
You see it before you pay
The likeness gets approved by you first. If it isn't them, we go again, and you're not out of pocket while that happens.
One price, no surprises at checkout
The paints, the brushes, the varnish, the pedestal, the guide and the shipping are all part of the price on the pricing card. Delivery is free on every order, to any serviceable pincode in India.
A real person on WhatsApp
Questions about a colour, a pose or where your parcel has got to go to a person here, and we'll keep you posted through making and shipping.
Questions about us
Who is Bombay Print Lab?
A small studio just outside Mumbai making custom figurine kits for people across India. The printers are ours, the paint is mixed by hand at a desk here, and the WhatsApp number on this page reaches a person rather than a ticket queue.
Why does the figurine arrive unpainted?
Because painting it is the good part. A finished figurine is a nice object you were sent. One you painted yourself is an evening you spent with someone, and it stays on the shelf differently. The kit is built so that evening is calm rather than fiddly: colours pre-mixed, every one of them numbered, every number mapped to its place.
Do I need to be any good at painting?
No. There's nothing to mix, nothing to match by eye, and nothing to judge. You match a number on a pot to the same number on the map. Most people finish in one relaxed sitting, and the slightly wobbly bits end up being the parts they point at.
What if the figurine doesn't look like them?
Then it isn't made and you don't pay. You approve the likeness before printing and before payment, and we keep refining until it's right. Once a kit has been made and delivered, it's a custom item, so do have a look at our refund policy for what happens after that.
What does it cost?
₹2,299 for one person, ₹3,299 for two, ₹4,299 for three and ₹5,299 for four. Adding a pet is ₹600. That price covers everything: the figurine and its pedestal, the mixed paints, the brushes, the varnish, the guide, and free shipping anywhere in India. There is nothing added at checkout.
How long does it take to arrive, and why isn't it faster?
Usually 7–13 business days, and shipping is free anywhere in India. Roughly the first three of those days happen at our desk rather than in a courier van. Your figurine doesn't exist until you approve it, so it has to be 3D-printed in resin, cleaned up, and taken through our two-coat primer process before it's fit to paint. Your paints are mixed and numbered against that particular figurine in the same stretch, and the guide is printed for it. The rest is the courier crossing the country. We'd rather send you something properly finished on day eleven than something unprimed on day four.
Do you ship outside India?
Not at the moment. We print, mix and pack in Dombivli, just outside Mumbai, and ship to serviceable pincodes across India only. If you're abroad and want one sent to family here, that works perfectly well, and plenty of people order exactly that way.
Still wondering something? Get in touch or read the blog.