Alice in Wonderland Sneak Peek

As you may already know, 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of one of the greatest pieces of literature of all time (subjective opinion but I'm not alone in this), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. A perfect combination of nonsense, adventure, math, and card gaming, it was a tale I could never resist. Nor could I resist doing a letterpress project to celebrate this anniversary.

Now, I'm only going to give you a little glimpse into this project right now but, suffice it to say, it will be a bookmark set containing hand-set quotes equal parts from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and it's chess game sequel, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. The sets will be editioned in 150, to tie them back to the anniversary.

I know the coasters were a bit deceiving; they were a warm-up exercise, if you will, that I did with some of my letterpress students to get the Alice juice flowing. Also, in case you haven't read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, or it's just been a really long time, Project Gutenberg has it ready to read!

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) isn't the only man celebrating an anniversary this year... 100 years ago, after about 11 years of preparation, Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity. I might just have a project floating around with this in mind as well. 

(if you want work-in-progress images of what I'm up to book, letterpress, food, and cocktail-wise, follow me on Instagram)

Punctuation Coasters

Historically known as 'beermats', coasters first came into use in the 19th century and were originally used to cover drinks to keep out bugs and debris in dirty bars. Now, everyone knows coasters as the objects you set your drinks on to protect a table surface and they are often covered with advertisements for restaurants, bars, beverage companies, etc. 

Last fall, I made a coaster project of my own. Here is a sampling of images from throughout the making of the project, interspersed with my artist statement. For images of the complete finished project, check out the gallery on my website. 

Punctuation Coasters is a functional book arts project; meaning that it acts not only as a work of book art to view, but also as a set of functional tools, coasters, intended for use by the possessor. Despite having a cover and colophon, this book is not bound in the traditional sense, but rather it exists as eleven coasters that break down and celebrate the building blocks of a sentence: punctuation. 

Every project begins with make-ready, as in, making the press ready for printing. Despite it's simplicity, I knew this was going to be a detailed project with a lot of press changes (due to the size difference, the wood images and smaller lead type could not be printed at the same time if I wanted the best impression from both) so I started by cutting a set of new tympans for the best quality printing throughout the project.

Each punctuation mark; ampersand, colon & semi colon, comma, ellipsis, exclamation point, hyphen, period, question mark, quotation marks; has a coaster of its own to showcase its importance.

This project was letterpress printed using a tabletop platen press in the autumn of 2014. All text is hand-set Stymie lead type of varying sizes and styles. All punctuation is wood type. This book was made in a (sold out) edition of 25 with 3 Artist's Proofs. 

The colophon was hand-set and made up on the spot. It took over an hour to set and only about 5 minutes to breakdown and redistribute after printing

Randomly going through the wood type collection at the San Francisco Center for the Book and finding a drawer full of punctuation, is actually what prompted this project

So much Stymie! It is one of my favorite fonts and I'm lucky to have had this collection to work with

Printed Things

Hers and Hers love cards on press.

I have several new products and projects that I will be releasing soon in my Etsy shop and on my website, many of which are letterpress printed. I am saving the final product shots for the official release, so you will have to be patient, but here are some in-progress shots to whet your appetite.  

 I made a mini love card series because love comes in shapes and sizes.

 Believe it or not, one of my larger projects for the year was an 11 piece coaster set/book art project. I'll go into more detail in a future post solely about this project.

My old gift tag designs are nearly sold out so I did a new, 3 design set that is rather literal and somewhat in your face.

Make-ready for the love card series

 Love card series lock-up

 Gift tags on press.

 Who doesn't love a little sarcasm when they're being sincere?

 I rarely do a card run that's large enough to make ruining a tympan with a scoring matrix worth it. That means whipping out the ol' bone folder and straight edge for a bit of hand-scoring action.

Wood type is just as nice on its own as when it's printed.

Craft Fairs, I'm Back!

After a little over a year off, in which I focused on teaching and job transitioning, I rejoined the craft fair game with San Francisco Center for the Book's annual Holiday Fair this past December (yes, yes, I am super late getting these images posted, don't hate me!). 

Since I no longer have a car, I have to rely on public transit (AC Transit, BART, and Muni here in the Bay Area) to schlep all my stuff to and fro. While it's obviously not ideal, I never back down from a challenge and one's display can always use improvement. 

Traveling on public transit also meant that I had to re-assess just how much I took both in terms of product quantity, and display materials. The card holders were a must but everything else I was bringing from items to sell to my tablecloth and 'Santa's cookies' all had to fit in a single rolling suitcase. This meant playing more with surface level display as opposed to building up with stands and supports.  

Instead of having back-up product stashed below the table, I actually used it to stack items on top of themselves within the table display to give a leveled/layered appearance. Finding a balance between looking professional and putting my products' best feet forward while maintaining a fun, slightly chaotic feel was a challenge with this set-up and I can definitely perfect what I've done for future set-ups. I do think this style adds to the 'garage sale' nature of my booth design which, with handmade chalk board price tags (made on playing cards this time), table cloth, etc, has been my aim for the most recent shows I've participated in. 

I found the show to be a lot of fun, and also a great success. Of course, a lot of this can be attributed to the lovely attendees to the event, but I'd like to think my display and design contributed to my success, at least a bit.

While I'm 'back in the game', I am still new to the art and craft world and the craft fair world. I don't as of yet have anything else booked for 2015 but don't worry, you can bet there will be more and more chances for you to see my work in person (and say hi!) in the future instead of being restricted only to my Etsy shop. 

Letterpress Gift Tags

Earlier this week I got to spend a day in the letterpress studio at the San Francisco Center for the Book teaching my first ever letterpress workshop--Letterpress Gift Tags.

The workshop was an awesome 3 hours of printing gift tags on tabletop platen presses. 

We began with learning to set lead type and basic press operation. Then we got right down to business with printing.

 Happy Winter was my design. The typeface kinda reminds me of a beer label...

 This one was a warm up for the students at they learned to work the press

How could we make holiday tags without naughty/nice ones?

Class ended with rounding corners, punching holes and adding string, so the tags could be attached to gifts.

Holiday Fair Craziness

Where have I been, you ask? I bet you thought I deserted the blogosphere--NEVER! First there was Thanksgiving, which quickly flows into the December holidays and, in between those, the holiday craft fairs. This was the first holiday season where I did more than just 1 small fair and so I put a lot of extra time and effort into my made things and display.

I flexed my design muscles a little and designed a few new cards on the computer and made polymer plates for the first time in over a year. They came out pretty well, if I do say so myself. 

The first fair was Bazaar Bizarre, where I perfected my display, which was greatly enhanced by some nifty wooden card holders my partner made.

Next was the San Francisco Center for the Book's Annual Holiday Fair; my best fair of the year. After that was Renegade, which was super fun, but, unfortunately, I seem to have lost all the images I took there. 

I learned a lot from all these craft fairs and came up with about a million new ideas for projects and products. I can't wait to put them into action but for now I'm kicking back in Colorado and enjoying a little family and football.

Business Cards

Last week I designed and printed my first ever custom business card job. I usually only make things for myself, so it was a bit challenging and nerve racking, but also oh-so-fun! 

The cards were for friend and photographer, Josh Smith.

Polymer plate, all locked up and ready to go

All packaged and ready to go