A long slumber

Almost embarrassed to start a post now after over two years! Printing has taken a wee back seat to the arrival of a baby which led to a crisis of space in the house. My presses, even though they are small, have been under a sheet in the corner of the spare room for 18 months or so, while the car seat, bassinet, tricycle boxes etc. pile up around them.

Now it’s time to return to the inky stuff I think though. First step has been seeking to sell more of the leftover stock I had from last year, a lot of which was Xmas themed. The folks at a cool little shop in Wellington called Made It have kindly stocked quite a few of my cards and they are going really well according to feedback.

I also had a go at doing what was my first job using two colours on a small piece - not overprinting, but butting pretty close anyway. This was something I was a bit wary of on my small table top presses, but they turned out well even if I sometimes think the green & red are a tad too traditional. Maybe I should have gone fruity with some hotter colours?

So for now I have these items available in Made It in Wellington at 103 Victoria Street, or in my online store at felt.co.nz/profile/intothewhite

It’s been very nice to get some cool feedback lately – and this is making me a lot more motivated about lifting those sheets off the presses again for new ideas. Sometime before another two years passes ;-)

Keepin’ Cool

Been on somewhat of a hiatus. This is a hobby, and work has just been too busy the last few months. It is frustrating that when I sit on a Mac all day at work that the last thing thing I feel like doing when I clock off  ... is sit on my Mac at home. And because I use digital designs to produce polymer plates for letterpress ... I knid of rely on the computer initially.

However, I’m back printing after having sales go pretty well on felt.co.nz/intothewhite, and I’ll shortly have a new selection of cards ready.

In the meantime I have produced this A2 poster of one of my best sellers: ‘Keep Cool Til After School’, the catch phrase of Olly Ohlson, who hosted Kiwi kids TV show ‘After School’ in the 80s. Naturally, its a nod to that WWII poster. Some memes just never die.

Just finalising the cost of posters and tubes to ship them in, but they should be up on Felt tout suite.

Bee-Commerce

After the face-to-face fun of the market, I have also joined the crafty hordes on both Etsy.com and New Zealand’s version felt.co.nz

Kind of hedging my bets between the two, splitting my stock at the moment to see which reaches more people or generates traffic. There is no clear winner yet and I am liking/disliking things about both sites, but hey ... its all learning.

felt.co.nz/shop/intothewhite and http://www.etsy.com/shop/intothewhite

The hardest part is being heard above all the noise: there are so many clever people selling amazing things in both marketplaces, that is hard to be noticed. Guess it will come with time.

Once again, I have a few Xmas card sets left and I am trying to sell those (word of mouth) is working well, but I am also still pushing the non-Xmas cards, notebook sets and this print I did with wooden type brought back from England.

Started as a bit of a basic exercise, simply setting and overprinting the upper case and lower case letters ... but when I was locking up the black type I realised I was holding a lower case D, and not a B.

It stumped me for a few days, but then I made the plate of the bumble bee to fill the gap, and it works well I reckon. Really nice impression in the paper, its quite tactile how the wooden type prints.

Market Day

My wares set out, ready to hawk.

Finally did it - sold at a market, and it went bloody well. Weather turned out to be fine that day, and as it was election day in NZ, the venue at Berhampore School was also a polling station. So there was a bit of extra foot traffic

Must say I really enjoyed the day - it was actually very stress free compared to printing and binding everything madly over the past 10 days or so. Basically, I just chatted to other stall holders, drank coffee and chatted to customers.

All up, I think I sold about 50% of what I took to sell so it was more than worth it, but on top of the money it was a real-life focus group for designs, colours & products, and let me see what people will actually ‘go for’.

Keen for more. Will have to hurriedly print more stuff for the upcoming Xmas markets that remain in Wellington.

A selection of the cards  - Xmas and not.

New for Xmas 2011

We 3 Kingz: George, Elvis and Halie Selassie - King of Kings

 After avoiding printing in favour of the Rugby World Cup this year (and co-running the related blog over at ruggerblogger) I have finally gotten my A into G and did some printing. It seemed like I have hardly done anything in the last 12 months ... thought about it lot, designed a lot ... but printed nada. Not any more.

Printed a whole new set of Xmas cards for this year, including the ‘We 3 Kingz’ in red, gold & green design above, plus I have handmade a whole lot of small notebooks; brightly coloured with different cover designs.

Became a case of now or never -there is a Xmas craft market about 750 metres from my house, and if I never got around to printing and selling some wares this year, well I might as well have just given up.

So ... things are afoot. I have loads more pics and designs to come, will post them after the weekend’s market. Also looking forward to getting a Facebook shop and webstore up to sell to wider audience, to see if this will float as they say.

I should add that New Zealand’s All Blacks won the 2011 Rugby World Cup and I am pretty bloody happy about it.

Rolling for Xmas!

Finally achieved something, or that's what it feels like anyway. After sitting on a load of designs all year, and just putting off and putting off doing anything about them I eventually got some plates made in Auckland at Inline Graphics on the recommendation of Shona from Magpie Press.

In the end I was really pressed for time, and because I am still experimenting with packing and roller height on the Adana, I ended up pulling these cards on the Farley flat bed press. I still used the Boxcar base and polymer plates, but after a bit of trial and error I got things lined up by fixing some furniture to the bed with tape, and using some tracing paper with guide marks to help line things up on the plate.
 

Sheet to help me line up centre of the plate

The tracing paper & furniture positioned to hold A5 cut card ... push go.

The flatbed requires hand rolling of the ink, so it was a little bit messier, and much slower, but the results are pretty good. I even got the hang of masking out the plates for hand inking so I could print some two colour cards in one pass.

Taa da! One Xmas card, made by me.

Next, I did what anyone else does ... I turned the stereo up, locked myself in the room and printed, printed, printed. Naturally there was a bit of an attrition rate, I’m certainly learning to pay attention and not push things so fast that you lose concentration ... especially with the hand inking because I had to be very careful not to ink the base or fringes of the non-exposed polymer. I am stoked with the results though. I must have round 90-100 cards done, probably six designs/variations in all. They ain’t perfect, but not bloody bad for a first crack. And better than the usual hokey snow flake dross we usually have to deal with here in NZ ... I mean, its summertime, Rudolph’s nose is red because its sun burnt.

Below are the results ... and yes, U CAN TOUCH THEM ... THEY ARE FOR SALE - $5 each or 5 for $20. Cards are A6 (105x148mm folded). Each comes with an envelope and sealed in a cellophane bag. All have round cut corners except the Angel design which I thought did not need it. Probably sort a couple of bucks out for any postage, but I won't worry about that unless anyone actually offer to buy any! If anyone is interested, pop me a comment and I will post an email address.

Ham Myrrh Tree - Red

Ham Myrrh Tree - Red & Green

Ye Olde Ham Myrrh - Red & Black

Metal Xmas

Surfing Angel - Gabriel Does Surf

Yuletide Warning

Ye Olde Ham Myrrh - Red & Green

Black Letter Ham Myrrh

The Lot

Thanks for looking
Craig

Training Daze

Late last year I was lucky enough to spend a day at Wai-te-ata, up at Victoria University here in Wellington. Myself and a dozen or so other impression hungry geeks, gave up a holiday weekend to ogle and play with the press' amazing collection of type and equipment under the sterling tutelage of Dr Sydney Shep.

It was a great beginners course over two long days where we basically played setting the type and running some prints on an Asbern cylinder press (pretty similar to the Van der Cooks everyone has in the States).

Day one we just played with type, grabbing what we liked, composing it and then cranking a few prints. I’d seen a quote similar to this, and played with it.

I never realised I grabbed a 1 instead of a cap I at first ... but it works I reckon.

Day two could set with more wooden type, and I took in my own wooden alphabet I bought in London. It is a cool deco style font, a Delittle set, that always makes me think of Belgian beer for some reason. It is missing the P and Q - but I solved that.

This is the DeLittle face I got in the UK.

Later on we worked together to print a small book of quotes. Sydney had asked us to find quotes we liked related to reading, prose or printing. For some unknown reason, I remembered this recent interview with Scottish author Irvine Welsh, so I used that ... but as it was short I twisted it’s spelling into the good old gutteral Scottish vernacular he is so fond of writing in. It makes it more fun to read out that way. We then took all the pages and hand stitched the book together as a keepsake - it was cool to have two individual pieces, but also this combined effort.

My page in the book - I went low brow.

Must get back up to Wai-te-ata at some stage - its brilliant. Just need a suitable project worthy of their kit. I should put up some pics of the press’ amazing equipment and type selection.