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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!)
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!
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!
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).
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?
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!
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!
Good morning all! I was so excited last night. I was watching "Bones" which is a favorite TV show of ours and the "victim" in the show had Nail Patella Sydrome (otherwise known as Fong Disease). They discussed it a bit on the show and my husband and I looked at each other in amazement because that's the affliction I have (as do other members of my family). It's very little known to the public and occurs 2.2 of every 100,000 people. You can learn more about it here. Anyway, it was a "wow" factor to actually see it on television since most people have never heard of it. Kind of cool. (in its own way) I'm enjoying working in my newly clean office. Now, I'm inspired to tackle my part of the bedroom where I've managed to pile clothes, magazines, books, and doodads. Time to pick up! The image posted today is of a cool pen cup that used to be my Grandfather's (Bumpa). He died around 17 years ago and my parents took in his desk. This cup was in it and contained old elastic bands, a compass (the kind you use in geometry), a magnifying glass, old pens, a rubber thumb, and some other odds and ends. I have since taken the cup and it sits on my desk now. I still have the original compass and magnifying glass in the cup. There are still the little odds & ends at the bottom as well. I like mixing in my current collection with his; it feels like family. And the cup has a great vintage look to it that has a lot of character on my desk. Have a great day everyone!
Happy first day of Spring! It's still very snowy here, but I'm thinking springy thoughts. I cleaned out my office today since I had piles of things everywhere and it became too unmanageable. It's back to "working" state now and I'm happy! I bought some fabric from Purl Soho and put it behind my computer screen/desk for a shot of color and interest without having to paint. It's bright and cheery and just what I needed. I hope you all have a fabulous start to spring. New beginnings are on the way!
Last week we had this amazing day where it was 70 degrees. Here in New England, in March, that is very rare. It was so exciting! The next thing you know, 2 or 3 days later, we are buried in the most snow we've had all winter. I don't have photos of beautiful spring growth to share (like everyone else seems to have on their blogs lately). I have piles of snow mounded everywhere. No budding plants. No warm breezes. I'm so jealous of the people who have bits of plant growth to photograph. That won't likely happen around here for another month or so. It will come soon enough I suppose. The up side is that daylight savings has given us longer evenings now; I feel so much more alert when it's like this! Not much new going on here. Yesterday we organized our pantry...it had looked like a bomb went off in it. After watching some Style network home shows we got inspired and off to "The Container Store" we went. We got a great "over the door" storage unit for our pantry door that freed up a lot of space. A few hours later, we had reorganized our pantry AND went through our old crappy "Glad" containers that needed to finally get thrown out. You know...the pile of containers and lids that spill out of the cabinet and you go crazy trying to find the matching lid when you need it... Well, we went through and fixed the problem. With our new pantry space, we put the lids on the nice food storage containers we wanted to keep, and stacked them all on the bottom shelf so we can see them all and never struggle with lids again. If this is the biggest triumph of my week, I'll still be satisfied. I'm now off to tackle some work...I'm designing a wedding invitation, a baby shower invitation (with matching thank -you cards), and some other projects. Have a great day!
I just got word from NA Graphics out in Colorado that they can replace my 3 rollers, give me all new trucks, and send everything out soon. Yay! I guess the rollers will take around 3 weeks to get; and I'm grateful to be getting them. I will be using rubber rollers this time around on my press instead of composition. Supposedly they will be much more consistent and easier to work with. (Thank GOD!) It also turns out that my roller trucks were off from each other in diameter, so that was leading to inconsistent ink distribution as well. I feel like starting from scratch with new rollers and trucks will really help me out in the long run. I'm so excited to sort of start over again the right way for how I work. Plus, since the basement is chillier, the rubber rollers won't constrict so much and cause me trouble. The down side to all this is the expense. If you haven't seen the 80's movie "The Money Pit" yet, I highly recommend it. It's hysterical. And it really encapsulates how I've been feeling with my letterpress stuff. I know it will get better and I will stop hemhorraging money to it. Eventually. Been working on lots of wedding invitation designs and birth announcement designs and am excited to debut them. I'm also working on a new website design for Megan creates. All will be shown in due time. My goal? To have things up and going in by June. Hopefully sooner than that. I guess we'll see. Have a great weekend everyone!!! Hopefully it will be above zero degrees this weekend around here so we can actually go outside without having the lungs freeze up. Last, but not least...my cousin found out she is having a boy!!!! It's the first child of my generation on that side of our family and we are all so excited. I'm sending good thoughts and prayers each day to her. Now, I need to come up with some cool baby shower designs for her! Be well everyone!
I was paging through my latest issue of "How" Magazine (it's the 2007 Design Annual) and stumbled on a gorgeous wedding invitation featured. I went to the designer's website and was AMAZED. The firm is called "Passing Notes". What beautiful work!!! For anyone who loves invitation design and loves eye candy this site is for you. The work there took my breath away. I was sad when I had finished looking through everything! The studio showcases designs that truly reflect the people they are for. And the thinking is very "outside the box" and refreshing. I was starting to think that all invitation design was starting to look the same! This gives me hope that new ideas exist, we just have to spend a little extra time to get there. Note, the site is in Flash so you'll have to have it installed. Also, I noticed that if you click each number, a new project comes up. To see all the images/parts from one project you have to look over to the right...you'll see a ": next" link. Click on that to remain on the same project and see all its different parts and pieces. That's where the fun is! All I can say is, I'm completely inspired! I hope you enjoy viewing it as much as I did! Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear opinions.
