Don't call it a comeback...

Park Avenue's been around for years!


I thought the font had gone out of fashion, but while walking around trendy Robertson Blvd. in Beverly Hills, my friend Michelle pointed out three instances of Park Avenue. So there you go. Park Avenue is apparently as popular as ever!

Joie Studio on Facebook!

OK, so I'm still figuring out Facebook, but while I'm doing that, won't all of you online friends out there add yourselves as a fan of Joie Studio on Facebook? I'd be so glad if you could!

A peek into my R&D

In what little time my clients haven't taken up (hey, I'm not complaining!), I tested out printing on wood on the press.

I had sworn up and down that I'd seen other letterpress companies letterpress wood paper, but since these thin slices of wood are fairly pricey, I decided to go get some from my friendly not-in-the-neighborhood paper company way out yonder on the ever-so-trendy west side of LA to test before doing some sort of huge bulk order.

The woods from top to bottom are aspen, walnut, red cedar, cherry, and maple. Not all of these woods are going to stay in my repertoire because I found that some woods didn't print as well as others, and unless I can find a way to mitigate the problems, I won't use them. The price of wood paper is something like 10 times the price of my normal already luxurious cardstock, so I'm going to test these pieces some more with different inks and different designs to see what works and what doesn't.

I am so in love, though, with the result of this experiment. It gets me so excited thinking of the pretty little somethings I have dreamed up for this wood.

I was going to post a snarky post...

I just read the Modish post about how one can clean a "letterpress machine" with baby oil, and I just made myself delete half of what I wrote. I mean, it's nothing new. I've heard of this, along with mineral oil, Crisco, vegetable oil, kerosene, fish oil, etc. I've cleaned ink off of my press with canola oil, so I have no questions about exactly how effective this is, because I have a pretty good idea.

I wasn't even going to even try to open up the discussion of whether using baby oil is "greener" than my diluted California Wash. I actually think the people who use vegetable oil and shortening win the green award for clean-up method. Last time I checked, baby oil is mineral oil with scent (a petroleum product), so one is still not getting around using a petroleum product to clean one's press by using baby oil. Mineral oil, mineral spirits, kerosene, California Wash -- they're all petroleum products. So by using baby oil, one isn't really getting away from petroleum products at all.

What I'm really worried about now that I've calmed down is that either (1) I have a gross misunderstanding of what the author means when she says that the whole press is oiled when she cleans with baby oil or (2) that press isn't being properly oiled. Because when I clean, I clean everything the ink gets on. Which is generally nowhere near the majority of the oiling holes on either of my presses.

So now that I've deleted most of the snarkiness out of my post, I'd just like to say that I'm worried about all of those letterpress newbies out there scouring all of our letterpress blogs. Please please please oil your presses properly. I know how expensive some of these presses are, and I would hate to see it freeze up on you.

And now I'm going to go oil my press.

Going Blind...

Blind impression is a neat letterpress trick which basically means that one letterpress prints without any ink. Basically, you're debossing (the opposite of embossing) the paper using letterpress techniques. I had a client ask for blind impressions. It came out great, and I absolutely love the effect. These letterpress wedding invitations are so romantic and elegant, and the floral border in the blind impression was such a gorgeous touch.

Congratulations, Rayna and Jack!

An Upcoming Anniversary...

Joie Studio's first anniversary is coming up! Wow! Hard to believe almost a year ago I decided to set up shop and letterpress commercially. I'm doing something special for Joie Studio's first anniversary and was up until 3 last night figuring things out.

Alchemy & Letterpress Business Cards: A Reflection

Ah, Etsy Alchemy, how you've unintentionally wronged and insulted so many artists out there. Recently Adventures in Letterpress asked fellow letterpress printers to submit bids on Alchemy that reflected "real costs." Over lunch, my friend noted that some of the "ideal prices" were insulting to artists. One of the Alchemy requests was for 16 custom fashion illustrations for $200, when an Etsy artist doing the very illustrations desire was charging $300 for 1 custom illustration. I simply take it for what it is. I mean, honestly, if you were to ask me how much I wanted to pay for something, anything, my answer would probably be, "My ideal price would be zero."

But we went on to bitch about letterpress business cards, the hot topic of the moment ever since there was an Alchemy request for 50 business letterpress cards for $20.

I, for one, love doing business cards. But the smaller the piece of paper, the harder it is to letterpress. And at a certain point, clients are paying more for the labor than the paper. I was so surprised to learn that there are letterpress printers out there who will print only 50 cards, and for such a small cost (probably not $20, but nowhere near Joie Studio prices!). So different from...ahem...certain letterpress printers who will take your arm and leg (plus your fiance's) for wedding invitations. There are so many fixed costs in letterpress. I mean, wow. The time it takes to design the card and handset type, if that's what they're doing, then to set up the press and then to clean off the ink after you're done. For me, all this takes WAY more time than printing 50 cards. And mind you, it takes at least the same amount of time to print 50 business cards (sometimes more because of size) as it does to print 50 invitations.

I'm not in the business of ripping people off -- that's hardly the way to engender love from your clients. I'm looking to build my business with fair prices for me and for my clients. I will tell you now that everything I do is custom work. Even if you pick a design and say, "I want the same colors, the same fonts, everything." It's still your text, your name, and I make sure that the layout is perfect, the fonts fit your names, and that the designs are placed to best show off your project. I mix all the ink to make sure that it matches the color of the paper from the lot that your paper comes from. I obsess about whether your ink matches your paper or not. I ask everyone who walks in the door if they notice any flaws with the printing. I annoy my neighbors by printing past midnight sometimes. So as much as I would like to, I simply can't offer 50 letterpress business cards for the same price as others. My minimum pricing is based on 250 business cards, although you can certainly request a smaller number.

Opacity

It's funny how different certain ink colors are from others. I can say for a fact that my favorite colors to work with are metallics, and not just because they are shiny and glittery (though those are primary reasons I love them), but because they are so opaque.

For the last couple days, inks I've been putting on the press have gone on pretty clear. As in, if I didn't know there was ink on the press, I wouldn't know that there was ink on the press. I don't know how other letterpress printers do it, but there are some things about printing that make it less of a science and more of an art for me.

One is how much ink to put on.

Certainly there are test prints to be pulled before you ever start to make sure you have the right amount of ink on. I hate putting too much ink on because that means that I have to clean off ink off the press before I ever start printing. It's a common letterpress error to print with one's press overloaded with ink, and I really hate printing with too much ink because it makes the prints come out not as crisp and beautiful as they could be.

Our letterpress instructor at the Armory once described it as a sound, and I certainly recognize that now. There's a certain "right" sound that the ink makes when there's just enough, as opposed to the little too gummy sound when there's too much or the kind of slick sound when there's too little. But I also gauge if I've put enough ink on by how it looks on the press. I can't describe it exactly but if I'm printing something small, I know what sound to listen for and what the ink looks like on the rollers and ink disc, and if I'm printing something that I know will suck up ink, I know what my press should look and sound like.

But with these inks that I'm working with currently, they are so transparent on my press that I feel like I'm flying blind, working only with the sound and test prints. It also means that I'm working slower, checking prints against each other to make sure everything looks like the same color. I'll need to show you when I'm done with the project, but right now, to the very least, my efforts are being rewarded.

Ink Vendor Question

I saw this question recently:

Hi Tina,I just got a Kelsey 5x8 from Craig at Don Black's Linecasting in Toronto, Canada. Unfortunately, the starter kit did not come with any ink or a cleaner. I've been reading and enjoying your blog for a while now, and was wonder if you can share with me where you purchase your inks and what you recommend to purchase for a first ink colour. Also, if there is a place I can order some califronia wash. Thank you (^_^)

I get my ink supplies from a couple places. Online, I like US Litho Supply, although I generally don't buy enough to warrant placing an online order. I got my initial supply of Van Son rubber based ink, a gallon of California Wash, and a couple other supplies from there. If I need one color or one or two supplies quickly, I stop by my friendly neighborhood Kelly Paper or even friendlier Keldon Paper. My absolute favorite place to get ink, however, is my local ink supplier Accent Ink. They only do oil based inks, but I get all my metallic inks from Accent, as well as my clients' special order custom inks.

As for first ink color, it might sound boring, but black is always a good place to start. Hope that helps!

SPLAT!

Yesterday while I was cleaning the press, one of the cats knocked over a bunch of paper and coasters I had been working on. This is par for the course with working at home. I keep the door open so the fumes don't accumulate, so the animals pretty much get to go wherever they want. So far, with one grand exception, there haven't been major problems.

Today when I came in, I noticed that my jar of metallic silver was turned over, lid off, on my poor carpeted floor. I can only imagine that I didn't put the lid back on tight, and when a cat (I blame Jezebel) knocked it off my desk, the lid came off and well, there was a big pool of metallic silver ink on my light beige carpet.

Now I know it's my own fault for putting these materials on carpet to begin with, but hey, the carpet was there already! Luckily I got it all out. Here's what I did. I first picked up what I could of the ink without spreading it even more. Then I used "Paint Clean Up" to get the bulk of the ink out of the carpet. With that done with it, I got out diluted California Wash, my steam cleaner (yes, I have a steam cleaner), and a bunch of carpet cleaning detergent. I filled up my steam cleaner with water and detergent, and, dousing the stain with the diluted California Wash, used the steam cleaner to clean the rest of the stain. Thank goodness!