Joy of printing

 

It felt good to be at Deckled Edge Press studio today - working with text, paper and playing with ink.

As you can see from the photo above and the couple below I had a lovely time mixing gold and black ink on the plate to create a black with a golden hue.

During the week I had spent a morning cutting paper remnants into cards for mini-posters and business card sized inspiration cards.

Today I got to print some weather grams on recycled cutlery envelopes (both brown and black paper) for International Day of Peace in September. Given the type was set and the paper was cut during the week I also printed some mini-posters as you can see below.

As I saud in the opening sentence - it just felt great to be in the studio printing; printing words that mean a lot to me;  and printing mini-posters I can give away.

Finishing

 

I have finished off two artist's proof copies of my It Wont Dismantle Itself artists' book on patriarchy. The main thing I needed to do was to reinforce the pages with light weight black card so that they can be bound. Detail of the embossed front cover is in the photo above.

The photos in this blog post are simply about the process of doing that reinforcing work. The paper that reinforces the edges is attached to the pages using acid free double side tape on both sides of the pages  - a tedious process but well worth it if I can get another couple of copies of this book out into the works.

The finished books, plus Uninvited Hands, packed in cello bags to take to the binder.

Below the unique original that will soon go into a public collection - with Fiona's excellent single page binding with waxed linen thread..

It requires patience

 

Continuing the process of making 140-150 silver-plated leaves; and printing some uplift nano posters using leftover ink.

But first - the opening image is the polished edge of a brass weight I use for opening the leaves to 90 degrees. Why the opening title? It came to me as I worked on leaves over the last couple of days. Making considerably large numbers of leaves is very repetitive and takes time and therefore a lot of patience as one does not have a lot to show for the time invested - but the final outcome will be worth it. Still some lovely progress photos emerged. The first few photos are of those that will become earrings and pendants; the second last are daily word leaves; and the last is one of the give-away leaves.

We had some periwinkle blue ink left over after our Wednesday poster workshop. Given it was a generally soft blue I decided to print some nano posters (postcards in portrait) as you ce below.

As got to the end I mixed in the last of the process blue - it resulted in a deep navy blue as you can see below.

Whole lot of letterpress poster printing fun

 

Fiona and I held a halfday (morning) workshop at DEP on Wednesday for four women from one of our local kindergartens.

The idea was to print a large poster (76cmX55cm) using wood type. The plan was to print words that reflected the ethos of the kindergarten.

After some workshopping of words and inspecting trays of type the decision was made to all use the gorgeous almost 100 year old Italian wood type - about 150mm high.

The photo below is of me talking with the group - but in reality both Fiona and I did the teaching-guiding. The group gave their approval for phos and this blog.

As you can see from the proof below it is always good to check your bs and ds. We had a bit of an issue with the capital K - it was a bigger font - different thickness - probably carved by a different workshop all those years ago.

The inking up was a joyous time - including a bit of play with mixing colours and playing with purple stripes at the end. All hands on deck!!!

We printed a couple of originals of the poster. We had intended to print some A4 poster; but ran out of time. So instead we had fun printing tea towels. Great photo of the stash of posters and tea towels and the printers.

I hung the tea towels on the drying rack today - the letterpress ink on the cloth (linen-cotton) will take a few weeks to dry.

The sun was steaming in about 2pm today which made for interesting light and shade patterns..

Pocket posters

One of the joys of having our letterpress studio is the ability to print stuff that you just want to. Fiona and I often use paper offcuts to print things to give away. Lat weekend and today I printed about 300 9cmX5.5cm micro micro inspiration-uplift  'posters'. The selection is shown in the photo above.

Tiny 'posters' are meant bro be carried in a pocket, purse, wallet to just hang around somewhere - to be discovered occasionally and maybe uplift us. Purple and a teals green seemed the right colours for the task.

A few photos of the process and the outcome of the printing.

The pocket posters will find new homes of=ver the coming months.

Poetry publication progress and packing up 'no to war'

 

It was a letterpress kind of Saturday. I have started printing the reverse of my pages for my Daily Words 'poetry' booklet. The words on the sheets printed don't march the titles as the sequence of the pages is all about how the booklet is finally stitched.

The words above are about Hope not Wonder. A few images of the print run of the two sheets set and printed - 25 copies. 

The words in the last image above are about Love. 

We packed some of our NO TO WAR posters on Friday and sent them out into the world.

I will be away from the letterpress studio for a while - the printing of the 'poetry' booklet will be on hold again for a while.