New Papers plus sale!

We just loaded over 30 gorgeous new papers online this week! To see the new papers, just click the image.

Also, we are continuing our amazing India Prints Paper sale for one more week. We are making room for all the new styles that will be arriving! Click the image below to see the sale papers.

Happiest of Valentines--letterpress, chocolates & books!

I love valentine's day because you are practically expected to eat chocolate!

Here's a sampling of letterpress valentines from our card class. So fun!

In the letterpress valentine class, some folks also did some tee shirt printing.

Yay Denise! Her shirt is for valentines, breast cancer and healthy hearts!

This is the other reason I love valentines day! The annual VNSA book sale. Over 600,000 used books on sale at the state fair grounds. This is an all volunteer effort and the money from the book sale goes to local charities.
So many books, not enough arms to carry them!

Every area has a sign for their book categories. This is my favorite sign at the books sale--not sure if you can read it: Book on terrorists, espionage, disasters & sneaky people!

We definitely did our part donating to charity as we left with a cartload of books.

Support your local park district!

In this day and age where city budget cuts are happening like crazy, we all need to get out and support our local parks department! Lots of their programs help fund their budget and they are incredibly fun, informative and reasonably priced.

Gary and I with our friend Lisa recently went on a dusk hike at the Rio Salado Habitat. It was amazing that you could look to the west and see the sun setting and to the east to see the full moon rising. Of course, I forgot to bring my camera! But the weather was fabulous about 68 degrees and it was great to be outside for 3 hours. We just had a bunch of rain so the river had just receded and washed out a lot of the vegetation. Lisa sent me before photos (above) when she was there in December--so lovely and below is how the habitat looked at the end of January--all washed out.

In the washed out state, you could see the debris that flooded in from all the storm drains. So important not to pollute--it winds up in the river bed! The rangers said that the habitat will revert back to the December pre-flood state in a couple of months. Amazing.

Here's the added bonus on the night--we learned about cooking in dutch ovens and made three dishes before we left on the hike.One of park rangers stayed and oversaw the dutch ovens. When we returned from the hike, we got to eat the yummy food! Three hours of fun, education and food for $9.00. Such a deal!

Grafica Fildalga Letterpress

Mike emailed me this video about a letterpress shop in Brazil. I watched it at 6:30 in the morning.--what a nice way to start the day. I just love this video! It's wonderful how they love what they do! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI5RekPMh_c&feature=email

Book Arts Call for Entries

The Kalamazoo Book Arts Center (KBAC) announces a call to artists for the non-juried exhibition “The Illustrated Accordion,” which will be held in the KBAC Gallery, April 2–30, 2010. Open to all emerging and established artists, this 2nd annual exhibition focuses on books created in the accordion form. All media, variations, and interpretations of this style of book will be accepted and included in the exhibition. There is no charge to participate. For more details click on Call for Entry.

Letterpress Holiday Card Class

The holiday letterpress class was fun! Thanks to all who participated. Here's a sampling of the cards we printed using vintage holiday cuts. Everyone was printing like maniacs and ended up with 20 letterpress cards that were all ready to be sent to their favorite people. Yay!

Folks had fun even embellishing their envelopes. These are the kinds of envelopes I open first when I get the mail.

We still had all the stuff out for tee shirt printing so here's the shirt I printed. You can definitely go crazy printing tee shirts. So many possibilities!

Making Holiday Paper Ornaments

Holiday Paper Ornaments Video

I'm re-posting...is that like re-gifting? I'm re-posting a link to our Making Paper Holiday Ornaments Video. We did this video a couple of years ago and I still love making these ornaments! We have two very busy kitties and concrete floors - a complete recipe for ornament disaster. That's why we love the paper ornaments. This is a fun project to do with your kids! It's so funny what goes around comes around--I  found these ornaments in a 1970's craft book. The paper was pretty awful back then but the structures and shapes are still fun today and we have way better paper. Yay!

Time for Holiday Cards!

Tis the season for holiday cards! I did two segments for the local NBC television station on holiday cards--at 5:40 am and 6:40 am. I had to get up at 4:00 o'clock in the morning! I NEVER get up that early unless I have to catch a plane. Bleary eyed and all, Gary and I trotted over to Phoenix. The positive thing was--there was no traffic! Gotta admire the news anchor Tram Mai from channel 12--she is so delightful and nice even that early in the morning.

I love handmade holiday cards. I love to get them in the mail. It's the first thing I open and always the ones I keep. When I was a kid in our local 4-H group, we made piles of them every year for the local nursing homes. I have really fond memories of drawing, gluing glittering & creating the cards and distributing them to the residents. Creating cards is a fun activity to do with your family or friends.

However, some folks get all stressed out about cardmaking. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind to reduce your stress:

1. The cards do not have to be perfect (you'll make yourself crazy). It's great to see the artist's hand in the finished work.

2. You don't have to give everyone on your list a handmade card. Give them to the people who will appreciate them!

3. You don't have to do all unique cards. Create something that resonates with you and make several of the same style.

4. You don't have to create cards from scratch. You could use a kit as a starting point. The cards on the left are from a Basic Grey Cardmaking Class Kit. The fun thing about a kit is that you get loads of materials to work with and instructions. I think of instructions more as guidelines since I always seem to veer off the path of doing it by the book. You can make the cards according to your own style. Plus, you have lots of left over materials to make more stuff!

5. Use fun materials in making holiday cards. Wrapping paper is a great element. There are so many styles and colors and it is readily available. These cards use wrapping paper and ribbon as a decorative element on pocket cards. Cards don't have to be just the traditional folded card so think outside the box!

You can also use the leftover paper to create your own gift tags! I prefer handmade gift tags over the mass-produced tags any day!

6. You could take a class and get all your cards done at once! Our holiday letterpress card class is one of our most popular classes. At The Paper Studio, we forage through our array of vintage images (called cuts) and set them up in our presses so participants can make 20 cards with 4 different motifs. Here's a sample of the cards the class made last year. We have different images selected for this year!

The class includes everything you need to leave with 4 sets of letterpress cards. This year we'll also be inking up some wood type so folks can bring a tee-shirt to print. Think of a word that describes your favorite person, print the shirt and give them the shirt as a present.

Happy Creating!

The Paper Studio Papers in Better Homes & Garden Magazine!

We love the conifers papers. Obviously so did Better Homes and Gardens! It's so funny, magazines buy holiday papers during the summer for their holiday layouts. We were delighted to see The Paper Studio credited for the source of this conifers paper. Creative ideas on ways to use the paper are featured in the December 2009 issue of Better Homes and Garden Magazine.

We knew something was up when we sold out of this berries paper in just a few days! (No worries, it is back in stock!) Love the layering and how the blue pops with the berries.

Here's a fun red and green combo using the lovely scarlett paper.

Collage Calenders by Randel Plowman

I love the work of Randel Plowman a Kentucky Artist who's Collage a Day Blog is read worldwide!

 Randel has done a limited edition of two calendars--one featuring his bird collages and the other featuring an assortment of collages. I couldn't decide which one to get so I got both of them!

The calendars are printed on premium matte finish 61 lb photo paper using 8 color archival pigmented inks. Each image is suitable for framing.  There is a total of 13 pages that  make up each calendar including a page that provides information about each image and is hand signed with edition number and assembled by Randel.You can get these calendars at the Collage A Day Blog.

THE CURIE CURE Original letterpress poster

"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals."  Marie Curie

Jessica Spring, Springtide Press and Chandler O'Leary, Anagram Press just released their latest print. Get it while you can, they always sell out!!  You can purchase the poster on etsy.

It is hot off the press! This BRAND NEW, hand-pulled letterpress print is printed from hand-lettered original typography and hand-drawn illustrations and patterns (in fact, everything was done by hand, the hard way!). This piece is a collaboration between Chandler O'Leary of Anagram Press and Jessica Spring of Springtide Press, inspired by efforts nationwide to obtain equal, affordable health care for all.

The illustration is inspired by laboratory equipment, molecule diagrams and the Periodic Table of the Elements. To symbolize Curie's revolutionary work with radioactivity, "The Curie Cure" is printed in glowing, atomic colors.

The poster was printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press. Each piece is printed on archival, 100% rag, recycled paper, and signed by both artists.

Edition size: 138

Paper size: 10 x 18 inches

Artist Kate Timmerman at Modified Arts

The very talented Kate Timmerman has a solo exhibition titled Then and Now (1998-2009) that opens at  Modified Arts in Phoenix on Friday November 20th, 2009 at 6 p.m. Kate is a mixed media artist who has created an impressive body of work over the years. I cannot wait to see this show!  The closing reception Friday December 4, 2009 at 6 p.m.

Here' the amazing thing--you can win a painting! Visitors to the exhibition who make a donation of pet food will be entered into a lottery to win a painting. All food collected will be donated to Poverty's Pets a downtown Phoenix group that rescues, neuters and places animals.

Modified Arts Phoenix

407 E. Roosevelt St.

Phoenix, AZ 85004

602-462-5516

Wayzgoose Fun!

 photo by Rhonda Lewis

We were thrilled with the turn out of the first AZ Wayzgoose!  The fun thing is that it seemed like everyone did a little bit of everything! Lisa described it as a 7-ring circus and she was right! It was so much fun, that none of us even remembered to eat lunch.

We started off with magnetic poetry. Jeryl and Lisa did a great job helping folks lock up words in the little proofing press. The favorite line of the day was: She said go loosey goosey be silly cheese and Be a dingbat slug letterpress printer.

Photo by Rhonda Lewis

Letterpress was buzzing with coaster and bookmark printing.Mike was on the go most of the day.

 Photographer Rhonda Lewis made my favorite bookmark of the day and she also took this fab photo of the press!

Donna kept things humming in the papermaking studio where everyone made handmade recycled paper.

Gary led the making your own envelope session. Notice the festive Halloween Hat!

The hit of the day was the tee shirt printing. (see Gary's shirt above) Below, Lisa helps the Labyrinth guy with his design.

We concluded the day's activities with a little pochoir on letterpress.

It was really a fun filled day! A great chance to connect with old friends and meet new ones as well.

We'll definitely do the Wayzgoose next year so stay tuned!photo by Rhonda Lewis

You can see more photos of the wayzgoose on our flickr sites: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisatakata/sets/72157622581803607/  and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepaperstudio/