Design Inspirations

I was absolutely inspired on my trip through Asia. It was grey and misty most of the time, which made the pops of color all the more vibrant and beautiful. I especially loved these women bicycling their beautiful flowers through the street.

It's been so long since I've been to Asia that I had forgotten the beautiful color combinations you can find everywhere. At a temple, I found the most modern color combination on the most traditional flowers:

So much to process still, and to translate -- somehow -- to my own art.

Silence in the Studio

The studio's been quiet for the last week as I have been traveling around Hong Kong and northern Vietnam. We're leaving tonight, and I've decided that I will have to come back to see the rest of the country. There's so much color and movement here, especially in Vietnam. I can't wait to share my design inspirations once I get back.

Score!

I've been seriously using a bunch of bone folders and rulers to score and fold my cards. Yes, up until now, all cards were folded by hand with love. It's a brainless exercise, but rather time consuming and not much fun. I read awhile ago that letterpresses make the best scores out of any method, so I went ahead and got myself some scoring rule and a funky looking creasing matrix to go with it.

For the longest time I've had a bunch of scoring rule and over 3 feet of creasing matrix for my press. I've honestly been a little afraid of the whole affair and so I hadn't done anything with it. My thought was to turn my tabletop press into a scoring press so I could just leave the creasing matrix channel on the tympan and score whenever I needed to. I never learned how to do this in my letterpress classes, and I was afraid of messing up perfectly good letterpress printed paper (and my press for that matter) trying this out.

My friend Carrie did it on her Vandercook, though, so I saw no reason why I had to be so chicken about the whole affair. I finally bit the bullet yesterday and locked my scoring rule and creasing matrix into the chase of my Pearl yesterday, lined up my card as I would as if I were going to print, and scored over 600 cards in about an hour. Amazing. Perfect folds. No more broken fibers ruining the fold and perfectly good cards. I feel really silly now to have waited so long to do this.

Here are the basic directions in case you want to do this on your own press:

1. Get a scoring rule and creasing matrix. Put the plastic creasing matrix on the scoring rule. Lock it into your chase and put it into your press. (I removed my rollers because there was really no point in keeping them on.)

2. Expose the adhesive backing on the creasing matrix. Run the press through one impression. The creasing matrix should now be attached to your tympan.

3. Remove the plastic lip that held your creasing matrix to your scoring rule. You should now have two raised plastic pieces that stick to your tympan and create a channel.

4. Align the paper as you normally would and run the press as you would as if you were printing the line (which, in essence, you are).

5. Voila! Perfectly scored paper!

Jennifer & Josiah's Wedding Invitations

My friend Josiah designed these for his wedding, and I had the privilege of printing these square invitations and square response cards. This is a simple wedding invitation suite, letterpress printed in lucky red. Congrats to Jennifer and Josiah!

Wedding in Bloom -- Beautiful Peony Invites!

Usually I wait until after the wedding to share invitations that I've done, but these were too pretty! I had to share some pictures of the invitation suite. These custom letterpress invitations were done on a tea length card with a classic beautiful peony in bloom. I especially love how the peony came out on the invitation and response card -- the peony petals have a great 3rd dimensional quality to it and it looks like the petals are trying to escape the paper. Just gorgeous with the letterpress.

Pictures and Samples

Last week, the rain came down like mad. Since I try to take all my pictures outside, I haven't had a chance to take pictures of all the cool special projects that I've been doing. Soon, though, hopefully!

I am very excited to announce that you can now purchase Joie Studio custom letterpress samples through Google Checkout. Each package will have printed samples on at least three different papers and at least two different kinds of envelopes. The cost, with shipping included, is a mere $5, and you can use it as a credit towards your custom order.

Custom Samples
$5
(shipping included)

Ouch!

I had a little "incident" yesterday while cleaning my press. I think I was really inhaling too many fumes or something, because while the press was running, my hand got caught in the press for a fraction of a second, enough to scrape up my hand and make it hurt. Luckily, the chase wasn't in or anything (that would have been super bad) and the damage was minor. Just to let you know, it feels like someone accidentally slammed a door on my fingers.

Nothing's broken, and I iced it with a bag of frozen corn so it's not too swollen or anything. Luckily I just had my tetanus shot! But to all of you with motorized presses, watch your hands!

Pinks & Reds

Tis the season for pinks and reds! I'm participating in Poppytalk Handmade this month, and I thought I would share some new items I have been printing.

This card has been sitting around waiting to be finished for MONTHS, but the right color of pink never went on the press. Finally:

Thank You Card

Then, people who were lucky enough to buy my 2008 calendar may recognize this flower:

Rose Card

And what's the Valentine season without a love card?

Plain and Simple: I Love You.

All are available in my Etsy shop! Enjoy!

Inks, Paper, and Eco-Friendliness

My friend Carrie and I were talking today about the current trendy thing to do is to ride the "green" wave by using recycled papers and using soy inks in letterpress. This takes me back to when I was first setting up shop and I was trying to decide which inks to use on my press.

Soy-based inks have such a lovely, environmentally-friendly sound to it. But if you look into it, the formulations aren't total soy formulations. Usually soy-based inks are about 20% soy, 80% everything you would normally find in regular rubber-based or oil-based ink. Soy-based inks use the same exact pigments as rubber-based or oil-based inks, and not many pigments are very environmentally friendly. Soy-based inks also dry in can from what I've read, so if a printer doesn't use their ink often, the ink will eventually dry in can, creating a top layer dry "skin" that needs to be disposed of to get to the good ink underneath.

I ultimately decided on rubber-based ink because rubber-based inks don't dry in cans, creating less waste. In letterpress, you use just a little dab, hardly any ink at all, and so one of those one pound cans of ink will last YEARS.

As for paper, Joie Studio does offer recycled cardstock and envelopes in addition to the 100% cotton stock that I use. My preference is for the cotton stock, but I do try to pair the stock with envelopes made from recycled paper whenever the design will allow. Clients need only ask for recycled stock on custom orders. More important to me is to limit my waste and spoilage by offering only papers that I know will print well.

So while the printing here at Joie Studio isn't powered by wind energy and hasn't gone totally "green," you can rest assured that my choices have minimizing waste as a top priority, which is, to the very least, eco-minded.

A New Website for My Favorite Client

Happy New Year!

Joie Studio's closed until tomorrow morning, but I managed to finish up a new, simple design for my favorite client tonight:



We designed a rad calling card to go with it, and I can't wait to print it!