Dive in to letterpress, Phoenix!

When you live in a warm climate, it helps to think cool thoughts! Plus, I love how letterpress is going along swimmingly in the Phoenix area!

Letterpress Central Open House

We are having an open house at Letterpress Central on April 21 from 10 - 2 pm. 

Come join us--you can make a print and have a snack!

Mike decided to make some signs using our enormous sign press. Great chance to use some super large wood type. The sheets he printed are 22 x 30 and the 3 signs almost cover an 8 foot table! 

Gary and I worked on the invites that would be mailed. We could have done a polymer plate but decided to do all hand-set metal type and ornaments. Then of course, I forgot to photograph the lock up. Hand-set type lock ups are almost a work of art by themselves. So much more interesting than polymer plates. We have such an amazing collection of old typefaces and ornaments that it can be hard to choose! We ended up with a reverse Gill, Trylon shaded, Brody, Packard and a french typeface - Le Moreau where the nick is upside down and it totally confused us!

 Wonder if the color of the clothes influence the ink color? Hmmm.....

We printed envelopes in three fun colors, chartreuse, aqua and kraft. I think I like printing envelopes as much as the invites because it is such fun to get surprising mail!

New Letterpress Goods online

We just added some new letterpress items to our online store and we've included free shipping for our greeting cards to make it easier and more cost effective for folks to purchase paper goods.

 Everyone should have a "suck it up" card in your stash--you know that you totally know who to send it to! This 2- color card is 4bar size and comes with a shimmery pink envelope. 3 5/8" x 5 1/8".

All the creative people we know are list makers, brainstormers, idea generators and note takers. We decided to work on a series of portable pocket-size notebooks based on typography. Similar in function to the moleskine but way more interesting looking!

Here is the first test prints in the series. The three journals are letterpress printed with an old copper plate (mounted on  really wonky wood). We are selling limited sets of 3 for an amazing price of $10.95 and free shipping!! Wow wee!

We figured that everyone could use some happiness! Post this on your refrigerator, bathroom mirror or work cubicle to remind yourself and everyone else that happiness is available.

This was printed with some banged up gothic wood type and the fabulously groovy & rare "smoke" typeface in celery green and orange. The print is 5.5 x 7.75 and letterpress printed on lovely cream BFK Rives.

Valentine's Day

Ah, Valentine's Day. Love it or hate it. We love it!

Gary and I decided to send some of our pals an assortment of valentine delicacies.

We were always wanting to use the ginormous vintage cupid cut so we made envelopes after we printed it.

Everything was done with handset type both wood and metal.

 We found a fun vintage cookbook that worked well with the love of cake quote.

Charlie B and Green Valley

On our way home from the SW Fiber Fest, we stopped in Green Valley AZ. A whole weekend of places I've never been! We popped in to meet Charlie. He is 80 years old and was in the printing industry for over 50 years.

He still prints regularly on his 8x12 c&p but just for pleasure not for work! He is a testament to the longevity of LP printers! We make it our goal to get out there and meet other printers--such great folks and a wealth of knowledge!

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.