Hina Matsuri Letterpress Card

Okay, so I will have to admit that it has taken me FOREVER to actually take product photos of this card. And it's really funny, too, because I meant for this card to be sold in January or February for Girl's Day (in Hawaii) or Hina Matsuri (in Japan) on March 3rd, so I printed them two Februarys ago but didn't finish them in time for Girl's Day. And I sold out of the ones I had packaged at Unique LA Holiday and never got around to scoring and packing the rest of the cards that I had printed. But *whew* finally! Here they are, my three Japanese dolls letterpress printed in three gorgeous colors.

As an aside, this was one of my first forays in photopolymer using a homemade aluminum base that my cousin helped mill. And it's one of the first projects that I did on the Vandercook 4 after attaining it.

It's listed in the Etsy shop! Enjoy!

Genevieve Walker Maps

I am totally digging Genevieve Walker's illustrated maps! I absolutely love the terrain view of her maps. She can draw a traditional 2D map or one like the one above. And her price cannot be beat. And, for not too much more, she can watercolor by hand the map as a beautiful keepsake.

I really love the look of Genevieve's maps and would love to get my printer's hand on one to letterpress, so for the first 3 clients that contact me about letterpress printing Genevieve's design, I will credit the cost of her illustration fee towards your letterpress order. Contact me for more information!

Sneek Peek: Monogram Letterpress Wedding Invitations

Why, hello, gorgeous! I am totally in love with monogram letterpress wedding invitations. Here are some sneak peeks of our new monogram letterpress wedding invitation designs:

I went in a little bit of a different direction with this invitation, which is less formal. The background will give the invitation a gorgeous texture when letterpress printed.

More to come! Enjoy!

Pics of Some Letterpress Goodness at Renegade Craft LA

I went Saturday with JoieBaby, my gal Friday Dee and Dee's baby to the 2nd annual Renegade Craft here in LA. You know, after going to Renegade, I might just change my opinion of vending in the summers. Economy down or not, people were loving (and buying!) the handmade goodness. Here are some pics that I managed to take of some of my letterpress friends and colleagues.

Tiselle's awesome sign

Sycamore Street Press came all the way from Utah!

Shino and Fugu Fugu Press

JoieBaby was pretty unhappy as his nap was interrupted and he was hot, so it was a quicker trip than I would have liked. I also met (FINALLY!) Mable from Lala Press / Dee & Lala after emailing for years and even borrowing her pallet jack when we moved! Our pics of her booth were not so good sadly.

Seeing all this cool signage made me realize that I have to up my game when it comes to Joie Studio's signage at these events. Hmm...to the drawing board!

This Weekend: Renegade Craft Los Angeles!

What are you doing this weekend? Because I'm thinking that I'm going to go to Renegade Craft this weekend at Los Angeles State Historic Park! Joie Studio will not be vending, but our friends from Fugu Fugu Press will be there along with over 200 other fabulous crafters. The best part? It's free!!!

Ikea-ed out...

I was at Ikea in Burbank when I spied with my little eyes the cutest child safety item:
Joie Baby has just started really walking around on his own, and table corners never seemed so dangerous. These Ikea corner bumpers were so so awesomely cool, I bought a package for the coffee table at home. They adhere like this and are totally adorable:
So then after I brought them home and put them on my coffee table, Joie Baby came dangerously close to bumping his head on the dining room table's corner. So I figured we liked them so much I should just get a couple more packages. I was in the neighborhood and decided to go to the Ikea in Covina to get some more of these corner bumpers and searched the whole freakin' Ikea for them and they were not there. So I guess I have to go back to Burbank (argh!) to get them because now my heart is set on them. Joie Baby loves the meatballs, but man am I Ikea-ed out.

The Atelier

"Atelier" is french for artist's studio and workshop, and I have been thinking that it would be an awesome name for Joie Studio's blog. I often think of this blog as a peek into our studio, where I share inspirations, new designs, and cool projects, so I've been working on a new look for Joie Studio's blog for awhile that incorporates "The Atelier" as the name of the blog. I found a really great pattern on Blogger's template designer that matched the new title design PERFECTLY, so I decided just to run with it. I hope you like it! I'm loving the left and right column and the slightly bigger text area. It feels like there is so much more room and is a better space to share all our letterpress goodness around here! I hope you enjoy!

Your Letterpress Business Cards

Well, maybe the title of this post is a little misleading, because the letterpress business cards aren't yours, they are for YOUR LETTERPRESS at Joie Studio. I wanted to show these off because I am so so tickled as to how gorgeous the cards came out. These were printed on Joie Studio's newest house paper, Reich Savoy 118lb in bright white. The back of the card was flat printed with a gorgeous pattern and the front holds both letterpress and flat printing. The reason I did this was because I wanted the "Your Letterpress" signature to actually look like a signature -- you know, when you use a ball point pen and it presses down into the paper and leaves an impression after you've signed...kind of like what happens after the printing press presses the paper into the plate...

I think the results are absolutely fabulous! With "Your Letterpress" as the only thing letterpress printed, it really makes the "Your Letterpress" pop just a little bit more -- adding a textural element to the card. PLUS the card is for a letterpress studio!

The dual printing method on this card is quite awesome and I'm totally in love with the result. And the best part is that since it's flat printed, it costs less for me to do this double sided card than it would have to do the 2-color card just for the front (nevermind the front of the card is actually 3-color).

Sneak Peek: Wedding Vows Invitations

We have been at the drawing board at Joie Studio! I think Leigh of hapa | hale asked me once how long it takes me to come up with designs, and in answer to that -- a long time! I think we dream up and discard so many designs and go through so many versions of a design before we decide it is the best that it can be. It's been over 2 years since we introduced new wedding invitation designs, and we're almost ready to debut our new additions to our LUXE letterpress. These two I love. I call them my Vows invitations. I envision these invitation on a super thick and fluffy stock (maybe a 530GSM or 600GSM cardstock), with scripted text in a blind impression and the words in either gorgeous black on pearl white paper or chocolate brown on ivory paper. So so decadent. So so...luxe. Oh, I love just thinking about it!

Here is a sneek peek --

"To Have & To Hold" Invitation

This invitation is designed to be on a #10 card. There is still a lot of internal discussion as to what other sizes "To Have & To Hold" should be offered in.

"Love, Honor, Cherish" Invitation

"Love, Honor, Cherish" is full of gorgeous flourishes. Designed for A7 or a deLUXE A9, it is so classic and elegant, and the script just adds such romance to the design.

Hope you enjoyed the sneek peek! Check back for more designs! We'll be introducing them soon!

Quails of a Feather...

Introducing the Quails of a Feather!

This is the marquee card of the collection -- "One of a Kind." I printed this card maybe a year (or over a year ago) and never got around to printing the message inside. Life (or JoieBaby), I guess, got the best of me. But I carved out some time a couple weeks ago to finish the card after Shino from Fugu Fugu Press helped me score all my A2s lying around here. Thank goodness for friends! Some of you who have seen the Momma Quail Mother's Day card at craft shows have already been introduced to the collection, but I love my little quirky quail!

I really love the design. It reminds me to celebrate uniqueness. And I can't help but smile whenever I see this quail letterpress printed on bright white 100% recycled paper. It's a gorgeous bright white stock.

I don't generally do inside messages, but since I wanted to flood the card with quails, the message went inside in the same orange as the one of a kind quail in front:

Here is a closeup of One-of-a-Kind Quail:

I just love how the eyes pop and show the impression. And of course, in the back is Joie Studio's logo:

I've listed this card on Etsy. I think I only printed like 50 of them for the first run (I was pregnant, I was tired, I probably had to pee). Get them while they last!

How Rubber Rollers Are Made...

Happy Monday! I just wanted to share a video I shot last Thursday. It's a short video, but I was utterly fascinated when I visited Adrian and Jane at Ramco at the grinding down of my very own rollers and had to get some video of this grinder in action -- here's a short clip of it --

The rollers that Adrian made for my Golding Pearl Improved were perfect and were made to Golding's original specifications (I checked with the Golding experts out there to be sure). But my press is 101 years old, and over the course of 101 years, the rails wear down. You can either tape up the rails, tape the roller trucks, use roller bearers, or any combination thereof. OR you can get your rollers ground down to exactly the right size. So for years, I've been using bearers without incident.

Then a little over a year ago, I decided to try out photopolymer plates on the Pearl. That was a miserable business -- the masking tape was on the rails, the trucks, everywhere while the bearers were moved closer to the base. They are NOT kidding when they say that your rollers need to be set exactly right. Photopolymer is not as forgiving of flaws as the other types of plates. Photopolymer is a harsh taskmaster, wanting everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) set perfectly before it will pull anywhere near the same kind of print on the platen press. Given, I was probably setting myself up for failure since I didn't have the deep relief base, but photopolymer was calling me out things that metal plates let slide. The Vandercook, being a precision press, had no problems with the photopolymer. But the Pearl. Krikey. I swore that there was no way I was going to do photopolymer on the Pearl again (the Vandercook is another story entirely).

But the whole experience made me think that instead of doing this whole big song and dance that I should actually just take the rollers back to Adrian and have him grind it down a little bit more no matter what and have the rollers be just right for my press. The metal plates would still print with smaller rollers. Then maybe, just maybe, I would try the photopolymer on the Pearl again.

I finally carved out some time to go over to San Dimas to visit with Adrian at Ramco to get this done (mostly because I had a bunch of business to attend to in nearby Claremont, the home of my college alma mater). Adrian was his usual helpful self, grinding down the rollers while I waited. I found myself fascinated with the vintage machine he was using. So now my rollers' radii are 1/8" smaller than before. Hot stuff! I'll tell you how it goes when I ink up again! AND I need to share the new studio swag I scored from a retired printer. I also have to go back to Claremont to grab some pics to share with you the gorgeous town I went to college in.

Covetous Cups...

So I'm minding my own business, taking Joie Baby out for some Pinkberry (yes, my 1 year old baby loves Pinkberry--he learned at Pinkberry how to use a spoon just to facilitate shoveling more yogurt into his mouth), when all of a sudden we're in Anthropologie and I'm staring that this very lovely display of monogram mugs. I'm very in love with open face fonts, and there is something very elegant yet down home and charming about these mugs. And it made an impact with just black on white. Beautiful. I want. But it's expensive to keep up with my baby's Pinkberry habit, so I left with only a picture. No mug. Sigh.

Peekaboo...I see...Bamboo?!!

Along the fence right outside the door to my letterpress studio is a little grove of bamboo. I use the term "little" loosely because the bamboo wants the entirety of our outdoor space and it's all my gardeners and I can do to keep them contained along the fence. Our bamboo, for all its appetite for world domination, helps to create a very zen atmosphere and shields the studio from heat. When it's 100+ degrees out, it's a manageable 80 degrees in the printshop without AC.

When the fellas at Smock introduced bamboo paper to the letterpress world a couple years ago, I was (and honestly still am) skeptical of how much MORE eco-friendly bamboo is than cotton. I mean, cotton paper, as luxurious as it is, is made from linters (basically waste product from the ginning process), making it as eco-friendly as they come. But Smock was saying that bamboo paper was the cat's meow and the bee's knees and on top of it all more eco-friendly than cotton. It really made me curious to try bamboo paper. So when I saw a letterpress printed sample of Legion Bamboo at the Stationery Show, I decided that I should look into trying it out, especially since I had an awesome design that I was about to print that would fit perfectly with bamboo paper -- a panda!

Introducing Peekaboo Panda:

He's an A2 folded card letterpress printed on bamboo paper and paired with a 100% recycled (30% PCW) kraft envelope. Quite possibly the most eco-friendly card we've ever printed. I couldn't resist putting the card up in the bamboo --

And, because Mr. Panda is special, I decided to print a little note in the back of each card so everyone would know that Peekaboo Panda was letterpress printed right here in southern California on bamboo paper:

I also letterpress printed Peekaboo Panda as A6 flat stationery:

I'm a little indecisive about whether to round the corners or not. The original design calls for but I like the way it looks with square corners, too. So I will continue to waffle on the corners for a couple days. (If you have an opinion, let me know!)

My foray into letterpress printing on bamboo paper was fun. Legion Bamboo is a tad thinner than Crane's Lettra and Reich Savoy at 265 GSM (I believe that translates to 100lb cover, only slightly thinner than Lettra and Savoy at 110lb and 118lb, respectively). It has a different feel to it -- I can't describe it exactly -- and the paper behaves in a slightly different way on press. I really like it actually, but it's been a madhouse in the printshop right now because we've been printing on five different papers and it's been blowing my mind a little bit trying to remember the personalities and peculiarities of each type of paper! I'm going to figure out a way to use bamboo to complement Joie Studio's current collection, but if you want bamboo for your next project, just let me know.

The good people at Legion Paper have been really lovely taking care of Joie Studio, so I'm excited to try out some other letterpress papers that they sent me. Check back on the blog for further reports later!

Happy letterpressing!

4th of July Giveaway Winner!

And the 4th of July giveaway winner is...

DJ from NY! Congratulations! I am emailing you the information for your prize!

Thanks to all those who entered -- it was really fun to see what your favorite colors were. We will have more fun giveaways in the future so keep on reading and following.

Happy 4th of July! Have an awesome Independence Day everybody!

Sneak Peek: Letterpress Starfish Invitations

I can't believe it's already July!

I just finished a custom project involving these sweet little starfish. The design is splendid, incorporating LUXE letterpress' Marbella design with the starfish. Be on the lookout of sneak peeks of this wedding invitation suite throughout the summer (the post of the full invitation suite will be up after the wedding). There was just something about printing this invitation on the first day of summer with the beautiful aqua blue color and the sparkly gold with the beach themed design that made me smile. It is such the perfect beach color combination. And of course, the printing went so perfectly. I wish every job printed like that!

I loved the starfish so much, I'm incorporating the starfish into other letterpress designs! Enjoy!