letterpress for valentine's day!

i haven't been at all (am i really ever?) organized about valentine's day this year but with a few hours to spare yesterday found some great cards from some of my favorite press shops. not sure why monkeys figure so prominently is my faves but, anyhow....

from egg press, the hearts collection which is on sale through 2/14:



from hello lucky, a menagerie of sorts:





from lizard press:



from dutch door press:



and many others at pancake & franks!

creative project unmasked

i have a letterpress project in the works - exciting! - but for the moment, i wanted to show you the 'creative project' i've been working on:



it is for a friend's baby shower. we went through the creative process (which i usually do from the non-designer side) and it felt great to produce a result that incorporated everyone's feedback - and that everyone liked. no small task.

steamroller prints

if you are around sf this saturday, check out the sfcb's 4th Annual Roadworks: Steamroller Prints and Street Fair.

this is your chance to see a-2 ton steamroller ink and press large linocut prints. there will also be booths with letterpress and bookarts vendors selling their work. i definitely am looking forward to it.

me and the machine

now that my press has been pieced back together by my handy husband, i am pulling together a list of all the bells and whistles it needs to start humming. i spent a bit of today staring at this and at my press:


Image courtesy of Don Black Linecasting

i am learning a lot - for example, after some headscratching and deductive reasoning i figured out what a letterpress - not vehicular - truck is. can you tell i need my upcoming letterpress class to come quickly?

making letterpress progress

I am definitely going to post more on my NYC finds, but first I wanted to post these:









I made my blog some stationary!

Letterpress class could not be more fun. My partner Geoff and I mixed up our colors and took the press by storm (not really, but we did feel super happy with our results). I had laid out just some boring text - the three bits you can see - but then in a burst of inspiration with our second color registration we adjusted things on the fly, played with overlapping text and went with our gut. We ended up with what I think is a really dynamic, integrated design as a final product.

I made flat stationary, folded a few of the flat pieces up into cards and also - thanks to Geoff's idea - perforated a few just above the wording which created some extemporaneous business cards.

I love it! Can't wait for future classes and... In other exciting news, my husband and our friend - both two handy people - fixed my broken tabletop letterpress! They fixed broken cast iron - no idea how they did it, but they did. I am impressed and super grateful. So I am a huge step closer to being able to do this chez moi. Again, can't wait!