Wayzgoose Keepsake Envelopes

We have been organizing like maniacs getting ready to host the APA Wayzgoose. We had a good logistics meeting today and then got to impromptu collaborate on printing the large keepsakes envelopes. (Conference registrants get a variety of letterpress keepsakes!)

While the brain trust was composing a very cool idea for the wayzgoose envelopes, my contribution was printing a blue stripe as the first layer. Will post the final envelopes once the wayzgoose starts. Gotta have some surprises!

Letterpress Revival in Arizona

The New Times, Claire Lawton did a cool article about Sky Shipley and the Skyline Type Foundry! We had fun printing the cover for them.

Here is a link to the story:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2013-05-09/news/letterpress-is-all-the-rage-and-an-important-part-of-its-history-is-being-preserved-in-arizona/

Here is a link to a slideshow with tons of letterpress related photos:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/slideshow/skyline-type-foundrys-sky-shipley-is-on-a-mission-to-save-letterpress-39515001/

Photos from printing the cover.

 Lots of wood type.

RINGSIDE Poster

We think of letterpress like boxing because sometimes it whoops the tar out of you and other times you feel like a champ when you land that knockout punch. We love old boxing cuts, images, posters and the language of boxing.

We wanted to print a boxing poster for a long time and when we finally had the chance to print the old halftone cuts of the guys we realized that we had wrestlers too. So the poster is titled "Ringside".

Noodling with this two color lock-up with wonky wood type and odd-shaped halftone cuts was challenging and an exhausting work out! 

The poster can be purchased on our Etsy site: https://www.etsy.com/listing/112903120/ringside-letterpress-print-vintage



Vintage Letterpress Look

My pal Lisa and went thrift store rummaging a few weeks ago and we scored some fun vintage items with letterpress imagery on the covers.

 This is what letterpress can be like BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS!!! Oh so true..well sometimes a project can be a bit maddening.  Gosh I remember my dad playing this album when I was a kid. It has really great songs on it.

The backside is set in metal type. So fun!  I need to get a turntable because the album is pristine! I knew we shouldn't have sold ours 10 years ago at a garage sale. Isn't that always the way?  Look out when we find a turntable--we can sing our lungs out while printing!

The next item we found is a kid's spelling book with painted wood type one the cover. It's from the 70's and obviously before photoshop. So cool.

Parking Lot Sale at The Paper Studio - Think Garage Sale!

Think Garage Sale!

We are clearing out stuff and are having a parking lot sale because we don't have a garage!

We'll be selling some duplicate letterpress items such as composing sticks, type drawers, metal and wood type as well as a bunch of paper goods from our online store.

Some folks have been calling asking if we were having an open house--nope--just a fall-cleaning-out-our stuff-sale! Cash and Carry!

Yay Mike on the poster! We used all handset wood and metal type (10" wood type for the sale!).

LA Printer's Fair 2010

It was the 2nd annual LA Printers Fair at the International Printing Museum. It is one of our favorite events. Here are some pics all the fun!

Our booth--we mostly brought wood type to sell--clearing out those duplicates!

 I love the color of  the patina on this type!

 Poster Gothic got a new home!

  Our friend Paul had the busiest booth--here's a rare pic of him sitting down.

 Paul must have bought over 1000 letterpress cuts. His booth was swarming like a bee hive!

 Guys considering the ginormous Vandy.

 This was a riot. The guy drove up in this semi and sold both Heidelberg's and most everything else very quickly!

 Gary testing a sweet pearl press.

 We did not get the pearl even though it was super cute.

I printed on this civil war press they were demo'ing. What a behemoth for a portable press. Prints well though.

Nice little British Parlor Press in the Book Arts Institute.

Some pics of the finished goods vendors that were outside.

We brought the hot weather with us. Was the hottest day they had all summer thus far.

Lots of nice printing going on.

Some nice handmade paper leaves.

 Some photos inside the printing museum.

There are some nice photo streams at the Prinitng Museum site. Check it out!

We love wood type!

We love wood type and got a crazy mixed  load of it. Back in the day, someone was trying to sell it by the letter and sticker priced every letter--even the 6 line type AND its punctuation right down to the periods and commas. Yikes! You think it would be so quick to sort but there are so many nuances!! So many variations of Gothic wood type, it will make your head spin! Of course we are trying to font it so that we can print with it but we are not sure how complete the sets will be...

PHX Design Week & Handset Type

This week kicked off the inaugural Phoenix Design Week. The designers we talked with are so excited to have this event in the valley. We had fun letterpressing hundreds of envelopes and coasters for the event.

We wanted to use some of the banged up wood type we acquired to print the envelope. I'm not sure what I was thinking because using all the different faces that had slight variations in heights made the make-ready on 600+ envelopes really insane. We love wood type and typically use the faces that are in great condition. But it was fun to cobble together a bunch of different faces, shapes and sizes. Of course it would have been easier to make a polymer plate and get the layout and kerning perfect but we figure there is enough perfection out there--bring on the banged-up, wood type! The flower is a wood type ornament (in pristine condition) and then we handset the envelope flap with gorgeous metal type.

Here's a photo of one of our boxes of mixed wood type. Look at the "t" that is at the middle top of the photo. I think someone bit in to it! Ouch!

For the coasters, we found a really old cut of a bird and metal cut of leaves. If you come to the wayzgoose, you can print your own coaster. It will most likely be a different design.

Gary handset the metal type on the back of the coaster. The one nice thing about using old metal type is that lots of the fonts are not digitized--the only way you can use them is if you have the actual typeface. Plus the old foundry type is really hard metal that can withstand the test of time and most types of paper. Printing these two pieces alone were over 3500 passes on our press that we hand-fed. Gotta love our C and P press from the 1890's-- it is a workhorse.

Wood Type Letterpress

Lately, it's all about the wood type.
I was actually a little nervous using this very large "W" as a background piece given how widely it was used during the past presidential administration...if you know what I mean! ;) With revamping our letterpress studio, we are finally been getting all our wood type out of their boxes an into cases. My in laws have been amazing in helping me clean some very dusty wood type. Old wood type gets an almost charcoal like dust on it--probably from sitting in somebody's old barn or warehouse for 50 years! Here's our most recent poster in process. We are used 3 different wood typefaces.
Gotta love the vandercook! I just got new paper guides--sweet! Nothing like new shiny guides to make your life happy!