visualchemist

Just finished designing and printing 1,800 Rabbit in the Moon invitation sets for Balboa Park’s Japanese Friendship Garden, in San Diego. These invitations are for the garden’s 10th Annual Festival of the Harvest Moon. Invitations, response cards and envelopes were letterpress printed using black ink. Garden volunteers will be adding a strip of brightly colored washi paper to add the finishing touch.

Kelly from Paper Stories organized an awesome letterpress swap. The idea is for a bunch of letterpress printers to trade their prints with each other. I thought it would be a fun idea to participate, but unfortunately, I didn’t realize that my timeline would be cut so short because of our quick move up to Washington. We literally had less than a weeks notice to pack and get ready for the move! Aaahh! Time was of the essence and I did not have time to send out for plates. Determined to participate in the swap, I repurposed an old design concept I had created for Suburban Riot tees and proceeded to hand carve my design out of a spare linoleum block.

Sadly, the carved up block didn’t hold up too well in my Pilot. Perhaps the lines got too thin from all the pressure of each pull. I really wish I had given myself more time to design out a custom piece for the swap. I was literally dropping these off at the post office on the way to the airport. While letterpress is a rush for me, I wish I didn’t have to rush through this one. I’ll have to do another swap to redeem myself. Can’t wait to see the awesome prints from the trade!

I used MasterP to print up this set of 24 personalized note cards as a special order on Etsy. The not-so-awesome part was discovering that the name of the recipient was spelled incorrectly. Fortunately, I caught the error before shipping this sale to Miss Arnao. Unfortunately, I really liked the way the first set printed up, although I preferred the composition of the second. The first and last photos below are from round 1, which I’ll call the “practice” round, while the step-by-step photos show round 2, with the better composition. Hello, it’s Brittany, not Brittney.

I got a call from my good friends over at Roxy. They were in need of 750 holiday cards printed up: 2/1 + envelopes and needed them out asap. I was in the middle of printing up Maeden and Derwyn’s wedding invitations, but I was happy to accept the job. Once things got going and I did the math, I realized I was in for a rough week. For these holiday cards alone, I was about to crank my left arm and pull my trusty little Pilot’s lever over 3,000 times in the span of several days. Lucky for me, Lieutenant Price had decent rollers and was up for printing the job.

On a dark and stormy evening, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, with friends awaiting my arrival at home, I made the trek out to Vernon, where I ordered and picked up the lot of parent sheets of Crane Lettra. 100% cotton. The good stuff.

This is what Lt. Price looks like all covered up in metallic gold ink and ready to go. After printing up 750 of the gold on the front panel, then the red tracks, and finally the inside text, it was then time to get these bad boys to the bindery for one last step… scoring on a Heidelberg.

3,000+ cranks later…

I would have scored these myself, but this run was a bit large for me. I got help with scoring from Ed, over at Afana Printing, up in Signal Hill. In case you were curious, here’s what scoring on a Heidi looks and sounds like.

Holiday card artwork provided by Roxy.

My first official letterpress project was for a wedding invitation set for a bride and groom that had wanted a theme that was a little bit vintage, elegant, and simple. The bride had seen what I had done for the McAllister wedding invites, and decided that a similar theme was right for them. I am a big fan of vintage cartouche, so I was happy to oblige. I actually credit one of my old professors at Cal State Long Beach, Jim Van Eimeren, for teaching me such a lovely word.

A cartouche (pronounced “kartoosh”), as defined by Google and Wikipedia, is a rounded, convex surface, usually surrounded with carved ornamental scrollwork, for receiving a painted or low-relief decoration. It was an insignia worn or carried by royalty and nobility, each one unique and served as a nameplate or emblem.

Because of its nice compact size, I decided to print the RSVP card first. The challenge was to take a single photopolymer plate and cut it up to print up three colors.

Here is a fresh piece of uncut polymer plate reflecting my RSVP card design.

The plate was then chopped and separated for each color to be printed. After printing orange ink on 150 cards, I proceeded with printing the green ink.

At last, I was finally ready to print the 3rd color, the cartouche. Even though the ink dries up fairly fast, I let the cards sit on drying racks just to be on the safe side.

This is how the final RSVP card turned out. Maeden and Derwyn’s color palette is a combo I have never used before. It actually turned out quite lovely.

After a big sigh of relief that the first piece was finally done, I was off to continue that entire process all over again on the remaining pieces of the invitation set, namely the invitation envelope, ceremony card, rsvp envelope, directions, and entourage.

I have yet to print up their program and giveaways to complete this job. I’ll post those photos once the entire job is completed.

I finally took some time out to print my first project. In searching for my letterpress, I knew I eventually wanted to give thanks to those who have helped me along the way, so this first card is dedicated to a certain handful of individuals. Though there are still a few supplies I would like to acquire, I committed myself to printing a thank you card using the moveable type I received from Tooknap Press and a little vintage army tank dingbat I scored on eBay.

COLOR FORMULA

Even though this was my first print job, and I had not yet attempted a 2-color piece, I was up for the challenge. I knew ahead of time that I wanted the colors on this card to consist of army green and olive drab. I started the process by mixing my inks following the Pantone formula breakdown. A little ink goes a long way with letterpress, so as a test, I kept my color portions small.

LOCKED AND READY

I had originally locked up my type, tank and stars together, before realizing the need to be adventurous and attempt a 2-color job. I knew registering the artwork without proper gauge pins was going to be a challenge, but I was up for it. I was forced to improvise. I disassembled the chase as you see it here, and broke it down into two separate passes. I printed the bold type first, then the army tank together with the stars.

TANK YOU!

Through trial and error, here is the final result. Some of the challenges I faced were figuring out how to properly pack my press, mixing and laying the proper amount of ink on the ink disc, and registering multi-colored elements. I also realized that I wasn’t thrilled with the quoins and key I currently have, and could use a second chase to have ready to go.

I’ve been pretty bad with sending out thank you cards in the past, and now, I have no excuse.

VINTAGE PRINT BLOCK

The other day, I purchased a vintage print block with a really awesome deer graphic. I couldn’t wait to see how it printed. Though it looked worn down in the photos, I thought I’d try it out and see what happens. It really did look like it had been around for quite a while, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. You just never know with these things. Maybe it’s got a little more mileage left in it, maybe not. I took the chance, not wanting to pass up a really great piece, and besides, I thought it would go perfect with some thank you cards I had in mind.

CENTURY GOTHIC

Puns are silly fun, and some can even be quite clever. I enjoy them, or anything that has to do with a play on words. When I saw this deer, I immediately knew I wanted to create a “Thank You, Deer” card. For my type, I used Century Gothic for its clean and modern characteristics. Setting this short sentence in my composing stick took less than 5 minutes. It was playing around with the tracking and kerning that took forever.

LOCKED UP DEER

Here he is, all inked up and ready to be cleaned. As you can see, I didn’t really set up my composing stick properly. To correctly center my type, I should have put equal amounts of spacing on both ends of the line.

THANK YOU DEER

To correct this, when locking up my deer, the reglets needed to be adjusted to place him centered just above my uncentered type. So really, this is a lesson on what NOT to do. What I should have done was take that extra minute to set my type up properly.

Here is the final product. I’m not thrilled with how it came out, but for a second project, again, it’s not terrible. I’ll have to do another run of these cards when I have the time.