for barbaro

january orchids

yellow dogwoods

A colorful day of printing...here is one of the wedding invitations I printed this afternoon. I'm trying some new designs, and I like the combination of flower and ink for this set. I have some more images to post but my camera battery just konked out. I'll be sure to shoot some tomorrow. :)

cards

This past weekend was pretty much all about business cards and personal stationery. I spent this morning trimming, and will sort and pack them after lunch. I always underestimate how much time this last stage takes...so today I have the whole afternoon set aside.

orchids in coral

I've been working on an orchid save-the-date and wedding invitation these past few days. The wedding is set to take place in Hawaii and designing it has been a most welcome diversion from the icy weather of January. Here is a similar look from an invitation I printed last spring.

yellow pear

A set of custom notecards, one of the projects printed this weekend.

dinner and dancing to follow

This could've been the tagline to my weekend of printing. I'm really happy that *basically* everything got finished. I have a few loose ends to tie up tonight and tomorrow, but otherwise all is packed up and ready to be delivered.

And I love this cherry blossom invitation. The bride and groom are both artists and chose a modern graphic with a very ornate script font, printed in smokey blue and chocolate brown. A delight to work on!

this weekend

Another personal notecard design by Arianna of The Petrol Club, so pretty. This weekend's press schedule is a bit tight. It's not ideal having so many deadlines converge, but sometimes I secretly love get buried with work like this. Like the feeling you get when a huge snowstorm is coming and you're excited to get stuck inside. Most of the last three days has been spent organizing the shipments for plates and paper, so hopefully all my bases are covered. I'll be photographing everything and will post my progress.

handbook of gestures

This past week was spent printing, trimming and scoring a large book project designed by the fine folks at Catalone Design Co. and illustrated by Dwight Allott. It was a 2-color project which required some complicated registration, and was a wonderful piece to produce. Catalone is binding this book in-house, and has promised to send me a finished copy. I'll be sure to post some pictures when they do, I can't wait to see the final result.

a word on scoring

A lot of radio silence on the blog this week as I was immersed in a large book project. It was a two-color job with 8 different layouts, so it required quite a bit of press time and kept me very occupied. Most of yesterday was spent scoring the pages, so I thought I'd share a bit about that process today.

When folding any kind of card stock, your need to create what's called a score to produce a clean fold (see second photo). Some papers are more rigid than others, so it's important to know the grain direction of your paper in order to determine which way will produce a better fold. I'll explain more about this very fun project after it is delivered. :)

opportunity knocks

I thought it would be nice to start off the new year with some neighborhood shots since I took a little printing break over the holidays. The waterfront park here in dumbo hosts regular art installations, and this latest one features a small village made entirely of doors. I totally love it. And while I had my camera out, I had to capture some of the beautiful winter berries scattered along the river. So pretty even past their prime.

I'm really excited to be starting the new year. I have a number of wedding invitation projects lined up for January and February, and I'll be kicking off my limited edition series next month. I hope to get better at keeping the blog updated and taking pictures of every project I work on. Here's to 2007!

farewell 2006

Just one more day to go. I thought I'd post shots of my last project of the year, some gorgeous notecards designed by Arianna of The Petrol Club. I used a lot of blue and tan inks this holiday season...let's see what colors 2007 holds!

merry christmas

This year's international christmas ornament swap was so fun.
I think this one is my favorite, all the way from Beijing.

hai-ya!

Last night was my last big printing session before Christmas. I finished four sets of custom flats, two sets of calling cards and a last minute rush order for restaurant business cards. This karate girl appears on one of the sets of flats, and she really captured my state of mind as I printed into the night. Today is trimming, packing and delivery. Tomorrow...shopping!

blue lace

These gorgeous flowers for my most recent save-the-dates were designed by the bride-to-be, who managed to hand-trace the lace on her dress. A heroic effort, and it really paid off. I love how the flowers really do look hand drawn, it has that loose feeling of lace. I'm excited to start working on these invitations early next year.

a verrazano christmas

I loved working on this family Christmas card for a client in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The neighborhood lies at the foot of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and they wanted a local feel to their card.

This may be a bold assumption, but I'm guessing that the verrazano hasn't been the subject of too many custom letterpressed cards. Maybe I'll get a few more landmarks under my belt in 2007...

one last day of marathon printing

The last day of a very busy stretch, I'm finishing up loads of jobs today. This weekend I've been tackling a save-the-date card, two holiday cards, three sets of calling cards and a large stack of various custom notecards. I'm just off to the corner to do some cutting on the guillotine and then I'll fire up the press.

Yesterday's sale at the Center For Book Arts was so fun. I picked up so many nice handmade things, including some stunning work from artist Nancy Loeber. I'm going to take some photos of Nancy's stuff and definitely post a link to her as soon as her website/portofolio is up online.

posting the old-fashioned way

I spent this afternoon walking around dumbo posting sample sale signs. Tomorrow is our studio sale (not to be confused with the many other sales I've been writing about). We do this just a few times a year, but it's always a nice chance to see our neighbors and chat about "how much dumbo is changing". Stop on by of you're in the area!

holiday sale glory

What a fun weekend. Yesterday's sale in the east village was fantastic, and I had a chance to meet loads of great designers and artists. We vendors had to set-up at 8:30am, and I forgot my camera in the confusing haze of the early morning hours. Rats. But one of the highlights of my day was meeting Portland, Oregon artist Amy Ruppel, what a treat.

And after exchanging ornaments in international christmas ornament swap, Vancouver artist Cindy Jaswal and I decided to trade some of our greeting cards. These are just beautiful...thanks so much cindy.

thank you branches

It seems the branch design for the bookplates is a hit, so I decided to use the same image on a thank you card for this weekend's holiday sale. Today I'm packing and labeling items, and will probably do a bit more printing later today. December is flying by as it always does...