The Boys of Summer--our type of guys!

It's been all hands on deck in terms of reorganizing our letterpress studio. I think we can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Chandon has been the go-to guy on driving the whole process. 

Mike R has become a super fast, metal-type-distributing-guy and is great at fonting our duplicate typefaces. There is something to be said about 20-something year old eyes looking at 10 pt type!

Jay has great natural ability as a papermaker and has been terrific at jumping in the type foray!

Of course, Mike O is definitely the LP guru and is developing the type list.

Gary can set even the craziest schemes I come up with!

Thanks to Toxic Coyote Frank for coming over from CA to give us a hand. We had a great day with him!

We'll show some of the work we've been printing in a future blog post. We've been doing a lot of custom work lately, invites, stationery as well as fun things like posters. We sometimes forget to photograph printing jobs because we are too busy printing--don't want to get the camera too inky!

Tis' the Season - Flora & Fauna moment

It's hotter than blazes this summer and the only creatures that are active outside in the SW are the Round Tail Ground Squirrels. They provide endless fascination for our kitties because they come close to the windows to sit and eat in the shade. Obviously they are smart enough to know the cats cannot get them.

This guy is eating a mesquite pod--oh the joy! Did you know that Mesquite pods have served as critical food for indigenous people. The pod has a thin skin, within which lies a mealy pulp (containing the seeds), which is quite sweet (about 20% sugars). The seeds are about 35% protein -- a very high proportion, making it a high-quality food. This is where mesquite flour comes from. We tried using the shells for papermaking but it is really difficult to separate the woody shell from the seeds.

Okay, that's the end of my Marlon Perkins moment but there will be more. I forgot to photograph the small snake we found in our air return closet or the coyote that I had to chase out of they yard. It goes part and parcel with living in the desert. I keep trying photograph the 2 covey of quails that have been hanging out in our yard --one set of parents with 9 little offspring and the other set with 5 teenage offspring. (I'm sure that's why the wily coyote was in the yard!) As soon as grab my camera, the quails seem to know and they run out of the yard--even though I'm inside the house.

SMOCA Kids Class

Here are pics from the SMOCA (Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art) kids class that Chandon and I taught this spring. (Chandon is the big kid in the pic) We did papermaking, printmaking, collage and cyanotype. The final project was making their own artist book and work produced throughout the class really rocked! This is a really small sampling of the work. With 18-20 kids, we could have shot 100's of images!The fun thing about kids is that the are pretty bold. They used everything including collaging and drawing on their negatives. Yes! SMOCA had the final artwork on display at the center and the kids talked about their experiences in the art classes. Attendance at the event was great with kids and parents. It is truly an 'American Idol' generation. You couldn't have paid me to get up and speak to 100 people when I was in middle school and these kids basically jumped at the chance to get up and speak. Wow! I was amazed at how much technical art making info soaked into their brains and it was a kick to hear them talk about the different processes

Happy Mail & Roben-Marie Smith

There is nothing more fun than getting gorgeous mail! In the our techie world of texting, face book and emails, we seem to get less and less interesting tactile mail. So when a note from Roben-Marie Smith arrive, I couldn't wait to open it. Not only was it gorgeous on the outside but such wonderful color on the inside.

I love that she stitched together paper and fabric for her note card. (upper left)Here's a sample of a couple of the postcards she sent. You can get a series of four of her post cards for under $4.00! Roben-Marie is the proprietor of Paperbag Studios where she blogs, teaches on-line classes and has nice video section on how to make several projects.

Roben-Marie is also doing a year-long collaboration call "Points of Two". The project explores two points of view in creating art. Nice!

New prints from the Tacoma Wayzgoose

You can never have too much letterpress work! We picked up a couple of prints at the Tacoma Wayzgoose. There was lots to choose from so it was hard to decide!I love this bear print by JR Adler. He was in letterpress at PLU. I love the composition and color. You can get this print on JR's new etsy site.

I put the print on our metal door to photograph it. When I stepped back, the whole scene struck me as funny--because the print says "go inside" on our door that leads outside and the pinhole photography piece to the left is by Chandon Thorell which has a dressed up couple sitting on a couch in their yard. All the juxtapositions made my day, I'm leaving the print on the door!As I mentioned in the last post, the Beautiful Angle letterpress booth was a mob scene at the wayzgoose. If you haven't heard of them, they are graphic designer Lance Kagey and writer Tom Llewelleyn who create and distribute letterpress posters around Tacoma. Their work is wildly sought after and hard to obtain via the seek and find route. Thankfully, they brought prints to sell. Here's the print we got based on the 7 deadly sins.

The printing is lovely and the writing sublime. Again, I love the juxtaposition of image and text.

Check out Beautiful Angle's website. Really cool stuff!

Tacoma Wayzgoose April 2010

I'm a little late in posting this--it happened at the end of April! But I want to post some photos of the Tacoma Wayzgoose. A very well attended event with lots of activities with the highlight being steamroller printing. The event was held at a local bookstore - Kings Books - so if you see a wayzgoose in your area, definitely attend! It's a great way to see some fine printing, book arts, papermaking and even make some stuff for free!

Steamroller printing was the big deal of the day. (Literally!)
That is a LOT of linoleum to carve!The bird print is so lovely!Screen printing your own tee shirt was wildly popular!These guys brought some very heavy equipment to sell!Nothing says fun like Pie on a Stick! See, I made this print at the Springtide Press booth. Note the bear print hanging on the line in the background. I'll talk more about this in my next post.This is the calm before the storm. The Anagram Press booth was swamped with people from start to finish!

Also more discussion about Beautiful Angle's booth. It was definitely the busiest booth--they had folks making posters on Nolan press! People were lined up all day.

There were also local book arts groups and a book arts display by the PLU students.You can see more photos of the event on our flickr site.

Washi Eggs - The Paper Studio in First Magazine

The March 26th issue of First Magazine has a nice project doing washi eggs using our papers! The eggs are really beautiful and so light & delicate. Our origami packs work great for this and so so all our beautiful yuzen/washi papers!

So the next time you are whipping up breakfast, baking cookies or getting ready for Easter - save your eggs for this super fun project! Click on the article below to see a larger version.

Vandercook Maintence Class

Here's some pics of the Vandercook Maintenance Workshop with Paul Moxon. These photos don't do the session justice. There was so much going on--I was too busy taking notes!Nice to meet our fellow vandercookers from Tucson!Testing rollers.

New nyliners.

Oh please go back together correctly!

We had to readjust the carriage which practically took about every tool we had plus a village to get it done.Ian's pals.

For the Love of Letterpress

I participated in a coaster exchange over valentines day. It was a delight getting this sweet box of coasters!

I love the simplicity of the blue letters and red birds

The little heart beings and the "hey mambo" are such fun!