Letterpress videos

Hello! It's such a rainy day! But it's not getting me down darnit. If you are interested in letterpress like I am; it's fun to see videos of presses in action. This great page from Swayspace Letterpress Printing has several videos showing how the press works. Very useful! Just scroll down the page and a few of the big images are clickable and play movies. Well, I'm off. Tomorrow I'm meeting the the nice letterpress man again who has all kinds of things for sale at his shop. Presses, fonts, tools, etc. He's so nice and the equipment is very great. Other than that; I have some shopping and errands to run. Don't forget Mother's Day is coming soon!! Check out my Etsy Shop for ideas to include in your gift for Mom... (Love you Mom!)

Hummingbird

Hello! Today's notecards are the hummingbird flat notes. With rounded edges and printed on Crane's Lettra paper they are luxe, soft, and fluffy. This card is done in two inks; green and pink. Another springy selection! The envelopes are also Crane's Lettra; and are just as soft. Find them for sale here. Today I am meeting with a nice man who lives a town over who contacted me to see if I was interested in purchasing letterpress equipment and fonts from him. He's retiring his letterpress shop and he's going to show me around and give me some tips. I'm excited to meet him and talk about letterpress and get some good advice. Have a great day everyone!

Leap Frog

Hi! Today I've put the Leaping Frog flat note card up for sale. Letterpress on soft bright-white Crane's Lettra paper. Feels so soft and luxe. The envelopes are the same; and the set comes with 5 flat cards. Buy them here. I'm still loving the springy green! The leaping frog pressed nicely into the paper; I'm happy with the results for sure. Am finishing up a wedding project...including the invite and rsvp card, plus printed envelopes for both, then a directions card and stay & play card. And finally, a program. It will be fun to letterpress everything and see it all together. The couple would also like a menu/bookmark design as placecards for each guest of the wedding...that will be produced as an offset printed job. What's fun about my job is that I don't just have to letterpress my designs; I can send them to vendors to be printed offset or to be engraved....I'm strictly the designer. It's hard for everyone to afford letterpress since it's so time-consuming. For my own wedding I designed my own materials and had it all offset printed. Now that I have my own press I wish I could go back in time and do it all over again and letterpress it! Oh well. I guess I can look forward to birth announcements and party invites and all that good stuff for myself. See you tomorrow!

Turtle Card!

Hello everyone! It's been busy here at the studio lately; and that's a good thing! As for my notecards; I've got 3 new sets. I'm posting my first new set today; and will post the next tomorrow, and the last of the new sets on Thursday. Today's card is the turtle flat notecard; letterpressed green on soft pillowy-soft Crane's Lettra paper. The paper is ultra thick and so luxurious. The envelopes are also Crane's lettra and are equally soft, luxurious and lovely. Find the turtle for sale at my Etsy shop here. I'm happy with the shade of green...very springy/summery. I hope everyone is having a great week! We are enjoying some lovely warm weather here in the Northeast for the first time in so long! Heaven. See you tomorrow!

Back in Action

Hello everyone! We are back and ready to go! The vacation in West Palm was great. It felt good to just sit and relax. I read 4 books, sat in the sun, went swimming, and had fruity cocktails. No photos though. I made it a point to not even bring my camera (gasp!) I am now refreshed and ready to work. I have quite a list of tasks to do today; so I'm jumping right in! I will need to catch up on some of my favorite blogs at some point as well. I hope all is well with everyone! Have a great day!

Off to play!

Won't be in the office this week; we're off to play in West Palm Beach, FL. I can't wait for some warm weather and sun. Miracles! Have a great week everyone!

Greenery

As it has snowed outside I could only think of spring and green. Or the wish of it. So, I worked on some stationery designs that involved that perfect shade of springy/summery green. First I had to mix it (15 parts yellow, one part process blue). Then, ink up the press. Well, I spent most of the day yesterday adjusting it because I put too much ink on. I also found that the tape on my rails compressed a lot and I was getting some ghosting on my images. I had to add more tape to the rails until I got a clean image. I now have 8 layers of tape on each rail instead of 2. But it works great. Also, cleaning off the extra ink made a nice clean print as well. It's hard to find the right balance; I usually put too little. The new rollers are such a dream. I can't say enough good things about the rubber rollers. Especially now that I've gotten things adjusted and working smoothly.
Anyway, the stationery designs are secret until they launch in another week or two, but here's the color on my logo.
I am off later this weekend on vacation to West Palm Beach, FL. I won't be around next week as we take some time for fun and sun (much needed). I plan to order the envelopes I need when we return and then I'll post my new cards on my etsy shop. I hope all is well out there and that spring weather comes here soon!

The Call of the Wild

Today's animal is Mr. Woodchuck. I think he's our new neighbor; when I look out our window I can see right into his den. If you look in the photo, you can see a black spot; a hole. It's right above and to the right of the gray bird-feeder hook. He's in the side of the hill and we can see right in. Not that I would look; I'm no peeping Tom.

Chris and I talked about bringing him a "welcome to the neighborhood" basket, but we're not sure he's used to our customs in these parts. He's been sitting on the rocks outside the house all morning. I hope he's not waiting for the sun as we're supposed to get rain and snow all day soon. Or maybe he needs to borrow a cup of sugar. Who knows. I worked on press yesterday. The new rollers are AMAZING. They solved so many problems I was having. Since they were new I had to re-adjust the tape on the rails of my press. I was sort of dreading that part as I had a whopping TWENTY FIVE layers of tape on EACH rail. I hated the idea of having to start again. I peeled it all off and started over and was happy to discover I only needed 2 layers of tape on each rail. PHEW! The ink distributed nice and even. Now that I'm using the Crane's Lettra paper and have an extra roller that's being used I have to use more ink than I had gotten used to using. But the quality and the whole process is so much better. I just need my California wash to come in and I'll be all set! Have a great day! I'm off to print the "green" color on my cards (yesterday was all about magenta).

Business News

Hello everyone! Just an update to let you know that my website has been redesigned and updated with my new work. Check it out at www.megancreates.com. I hope you like it!
I was also featured yesterday in I Love Letterpress' blog showcase featuring Birth Announcement design. You can check it out here. Today I will be doing some administrative work in the morning and am on press the rest of the day as I adjust my new rollers and print some notecards. I'm so happy with the new rollers in terms of how they work on the press. Now I have to see how they print! I wonder what wildlife will await me outside today?

Gobble!! Gobble!!

Holy crap! I was talking to myself this morning as I planned the day and I glanced out my living room window and saw a turkey wandering around outside. Cool! I thought. So I started taking photos of it...

After several shots (Wow! I've never seen a turkey like this up close! And it's right by the house!) I realized....Heyyyyyyy, where there's one turkey there's more! So I tip-toed over to the next window on the other side of the room, looked out and saw this one. It was double the size of the other one and much more colorful...

Wow! I thought...cool! A turkey couple. So I watched the bigger one for a while and took a million photos. Soon, I realized it was looking in our basement door.
So I tiptoed over and went down a few steps to the basement and saw this:
It noticed me on the stairs. It was giving me the evil turkey eye and was pacing back and forth in the doorway. WOW!


So I went back up the stairs to calm his fears and back to the living room where I could look down on it. Here it is staring into the basement:

I heard "clang-clang!".....clang clang!!!!!! It was knocking on the glass door. Finally, it calmed and wandered away to be with it's wife in the woods with it's calmed feathers.

I've never seen them around the house before much less at all! Good times. By the way, Easter dinner went well and we had so much fun!!!!!!! I was so full by the end of it I thought I'd burst. Always fun to be with family! Have a great day all!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! Well, it's tomorrow, but I figure I'll write today. As you can see, the China is ready for the fabulous meal to come. Chris and I are hosting Easter and having my parents, my brother, my Aunt, and my cousin come over for the day. Chris is making a roasted Rosemary and Garlic leg of lamb with mushroom risotto and salad. I'm avoiding the lamb and sticking with the risotto myself. We're excited. Today means a massive cleaning of the house (which I dread) but it will be worth it.
This past week I went and had a web design tutorial session with Camilo; and it was fabulous! I learned so much and have a good handle on my website redesign. I've got a bunch of it done, but the portfolio section is the largest part and is yet to be started. Yikes! I went to a paper show with an associate/friend of mine and it was very interesting. The theme of the show was on "green" environmentally friendly paper practices, etc. It was so informative. One thing we as designers can do is select papers that are FSC certified and use printers that are FSC certified. This indicates that the paper used to print comes from a forest which is well-managed according to strict environmental, social, and economical standards. These forests are sustainable and made for the purposes of producing paper so that the forests key to our world's survival are protected. This issue with paper production now goes way beyond just being recycled. The papers now are so beautiful. You would NEVER know they were recycled. There's so many lovely choices now in the recycled/green side of things and the prices are almost the same. There's no good reason to NOT choose FSC Certified papers...it's a win/win. In order to find out more; just ask your printer or paper vendor. It's a hot topic right now and is likely the way all paper is going. You can find out how your choices impact the environment by checking out www.papercalculator.org. It's so fascinating at the HUGE impact one little project can make. Play around on that website; you'll see what I mean! As a designer I always wonder how I can have a positive impact on the world in some way. This seems to be the area where the choices I make matter. For the sake of my future children I have to take this seriously. I'm realizing I have to educate myself on these issues because nobody is going to do it for me. Have a great weekend everyone!

Happy April!

Howdy! It's the first day of April; Spring is here and warmer weather is in sight. I think I'm coming down with the cold my husband had. But I'll stay in denial and hope it just goes away. I got word back from NA Graphics...the vendor doing my letterpress rollers said I should have them by this coming Thursday...YAY! Then I'll be back in action. They will be rubber this time; so they won't constantly shrink from the cold. Monday I have a web tutorial session with my friend's husband who teaches web design and digital photo/color balancing, etc. etc. I have a bunch of questions and am excited to have someone sitting with me to shed light on the confusing web world for me. As I redo my company website, this will all be helpful information. I'm so tired of scouring books and the internet and still coming up short with what I want to know. Me and a friend/associate are going to a paper show on Wednesday up in Portsmouth, NH (not far away). It will be nice to learn some new things about paper and get plenty of creative eye candy to peruse. I know. I'm lame. But graphic designers get excited about things like paper. It's out of my control. Hopefully I'll have more exciting things to post about soon! I'm off to research lined envelopes now (anyone know where I can get cool A7-sized lined envelopes???) Have a Happy April Fools' Day!