Circles & Dots Custom Baby Shower Invitations

On Monday, I showed you circles & dots baby shower invitations after the first run of blue. I was asked for fun custom letterpress shower invitations that weren't too "baby." Here is the result, which I absolutely love:

Congratulations, Brad & Megan!

Fung Associates Card

Even companies can have some fun!

Back in January, I printed these festive custom designed letterpress invitations on 110lb 100% cotton bright white cardstock. The custom invitations were designed by my favorite collaborators Toast-ED/Shop Toast.

Enjoy!

eBay Goodie!

So every now and then, I go a little crazy on eBay. But luckily, this time around I actually found something I've been needing for my printroom:

Yay! Everywhere I've inquired I've gotten not so fun prices, so this one on eBay was a "deal," even if I'm paying more for shipping than the item itself. I imagine this didn't go for very much because there's barely any furniture on it. I don't care. I already have furniture and I need a more orderly place to put them than in two different drawers on opposing sides of the room.

I have grand dreams of sanding this down and painting it hot pink. Probably what will actually happen is that I will wipe it down and put it in between my olive green type cabinet and my pretty Pearl press. I can't wait to get it!!!

Sakura Matsuri - Letterpress Cherry Blossoms

April is the month of cherry blossoms! In Japan I learned that Japanese families take the time during the cherry blossom festival to take time out, go on a picnic, and admire cherry blossoms. Isn't that just a lovely thought?

I spent all weekend working on the digital file of this sakura design. It printed perfectly today, thank goodness, so I'm jazzed and had to grab the camera and take a couple pictures. This is actually just the first part of the design, but I liked it so much as is that I'm leaving a bunch of them just like this as flat cards. We're having our own letterpress cherry blossom festival here at Joie Studio! They'll be going up in the Etsy shop as soon as they're done drying.

It's the first to be printed of my new collection! Enjoy!

Boxcar Base or Honeycomb Base?

I've been using the standard custom magnesium on wood, but now that I'm getting into larger patterns with my designs, I've been noticing unevenness in print that can only be due to the wood underneath. Problematic, though one of my letterpress friends in going through my recent work commented that the unevenness made the pattern look cooler. But that was only after I concocted some insane makeready to make it print the way it did.

So eventually I will need to make a decision on whether I want to go towards photopolymer and grab myself a photopolymer base or stick with metal plates and go for a honeycomb base.

What's fun about photopolymer is that with a Boxcar base, you're pretty much just using stickers on the base. Magnetic bases are probably the better option as they're so much more heavy-duty but they are so outrageously out of my price range. What's not so fun about photopolymer, besides the fact that those little sticky pieces of plastic are more expensive than my metal on wood setup right now, is that you're basically using stickers on the base. Magnesium to me is already flimsy enough as is, and I can't imagine hard plastic to be as strong as metal. There are those that say that magnesium makes a better print -- especially with text, and after seeing some photopolymer printing out there, I have to tend to agree.

Now with the honeycomb base, I get to keep using magnesium or even copper plates, but the difference is that I would be buying the plates unmounted and mount them onto the honeycomb base, which is metal and consistent and good. The downside is I'd need a thicker metal plate to mount onto a honeycomb base, so that the cost is higher than the old metal on wood method as wood is cheap and metal is not.

Either way, both options cost more, and I'm really uncertain of what it will do to my overall print quality.

I really really wish the letterpress classes that I took and the thousands of dollars I put into the classes would have let me experience these different methods of printing. I mean, sure, I can set type pretty well, I know how to set the chase properly (though I almost never do unless I'm using hand-set type), and I can mix my own colors, but these are the days when it's frustrating to me because I feel like I'm making a blind choice based on what I've read and other people's experiences when, really, I would have liked to experience ALL these different methods and choose for myself what I like best.

Hmm, if only there were an equipment rental program where I could try out all these bases before making a final decision...

Circles & Dots

Here is the first color of a baby shower invitation that utilizes my new circles design. Notice underneath the proof printout of the design? I use the proof to remind myself where placement of the different pieces of the design should be during the printing process. I find these, along with my trusty line gauge, completely invaluable during the printing process.

ROADTRIP!

We're leaving the comforts of L.A. and taking a roadtrip up to a place where people wear flowers in their hair. Yes, Joie Studio is taking a roadtrip up to the San Francisco Bay area for Bazaar Bizarre, a part of Maker Faire. We'll have a booth May 3-4, 2008, and will be introducing some of our newest designs!

We're excited, and we hope our San Francisco friends will stop by to say hello!

My Black Ink

One of my clients marveled recently how beautiful my black is. She said it looked like rich calligrapher's ink.

So I'll let all of you in on my secret, which really isn't much of a secret at all. I find the black ink straight out of the can to be kind of flat and almost never use black straight out of the can. I add reflex blue, and quite a bit of it at that, to give it more body and to make it a richer jet black color.

Fabulous Christmas Cards

I know it's a little late (or early) for Christmas cards, but I realized that I never posted these wonderful cards. A while back, I posted about these absolutely gorgeous chocolate envelopes that I letterpressed in metallic gold ink. Here is the rest of the custom Christmas card. We printed on ultra ultra thick 220lb Crane's Lettra in Ecruwhite. Then, Joie Studio also assembled the photo card, adhering 300 photographs onto these cards. Yes, that was a fun day of sniffing glue. On top of that, since these cards were so thick, we also professionally drilled holes for the ribbon. The results are gorgeous.

New Letterpress Animal: The Otter!

Making a splashy entrance is one of my favorite animals: the otter! The otter is letterpressed in chocolate brown and paired with azure blue envelopes. I absolutely love the blue/brown color combination, and I thought, why not give the otter a blue envelope to swim in?