Saturday in the city

This past Saturday a group of us drove our bikes up to the city and rode from Crissy Field, across the bridge, and down into Sausalito. We had lunch in Sausalito before taking the ferry to Fisherman's Wharf. I managed to get my camera out of my bag while biking on the bridge -- I had to get some pictures!



Then we rode to Ghiradelli Square and ducked into Kara's Cupcakes. It was heavenly. Not only were the cupcakes amazing (I got the passion fruit. Yum.), but the store design had me snapping pictures left and right. They letterpressed their logo onto the napkins! How awesome is that?



Before heading back home, we stopped by Little Otsu to check out the store and drop off my order. I loved the store -- they have some really neat stuff by indie artists and also under their own label. And it was so fun to see them put out my paper goods!





Oh, and Charlie came with us on the bike ride. We got her a little basket thing and strapped her in. She looked quite comfy in there and adorable as usual.

Packaging

I've been busy the last couple of days working on a wholesale order (my first!) for Little Otsu in San Francisco. I think my favorite part of making all my goods is packaging everything up. It's so satisfying looking at the little stacks of jotters and card sets ready to go.



I also want to say thank you to Tina for giving me the Brillante Weblog award. Tina has been exploring all sorts printing methods and shares some great tips and lessons for gocco and screenprinting on her blog. I'm sure I'll go back and read her entries when I do get around to screenprinting one of these days.

Some fun things from this past week: the new taska webshop, these letterpress projects, and Jenny's feature in Domino mag (and her amazing fall collection).

A beautiful collaboration

I saw this the other day and bought it immediately. It's a limited-edition letterpress collaboration by Shanna Murray and Pistachio Press. I love the varied textures and the delightful pops of red against the soft blue and gray. I think it's safe to say I will never write in these, but will most likely frame and hang them up.



And here is my favorite recent shot of Charlie. I've been trying to take lots of pictures because I know this puppy phase will be over before I know it. (Though I must admit I cannot wait until she's properly potty-trained.) When I take her out to the backyard to see if she'll relieve herself, she'll zoom around and it's actually getting hard to catch her! That girl. Sigh.

Last of the letterpress goodies

Okay, finally finished adding everything I printed from the letterpress class to the shop! And Charlie is sleeping and snoring away in my lap as I write this post. She makes all sorts of funny noises when she's sleeping, and sometimes her nose and eyes twitch like she's having some crazy dream. Such a cutie. Anyway, here is a fun letterpress print I did with hand-set wooden type.



And a couple more letterpress flat cards..





These last two were not letterpressed, but were done on a much simpler press called the sign press. I plopped the plate down, rolled ink over the plate with a rubber brayer, clamped the paper face down over the plate, and rolled a big roller over the stack. You end up with a lot more ink on each print, so the color is more saturated. But the color is also less even, and the impression is not as deep as letterpress. The result is less "clean" than letterpress, but I like the rawness.

Letterpress cards in the shop

The weekend was indeed full of fun printing productivity! Driving 45 minutes each way to the class on both Saturday and Sunday was pretty tiring (not to mention not being able to sleep in), but entirely worth it. I managed to print quite a few things, and will add them to the shop over 2 days. Here are a few of the cards I just added to the shop!







This last one here is actually printed from the plate I used for my wedding thank you cards. My printer gave me all the plates for my invitation, and I've been wanting to re-print the thank you cards in another color. The original ones were printed in yellow, and I'm also adding those to the shop since I have plenty leftover. I really wanted it in the teal, but there just wasn't enough time. I might look into renting time in a letterpress studio in San Francisco one of these days.



Edit 8/7: I took the Contemporary Letterpress class at California College of the Arts in Oakland. It's part of extended education program, and it's taught by Thea Sizemore, along with her husband Patrick. They were great teachers and made the class a lot of fun. Thea teaches this class twice a year. There are also letterpress classes at the San Francisco Center for the Book.

Letterpress

This is the last weekend of the letterpress class, so it's a big printing weekend. We submitted designs to be made into plates earlier this week, and we'll be printing all day Saturday and Sunday. There are about 10 people in the class, and only 2 presses, so press time is limited. The number of colors is also limited, and we vote on the colors we want so that we're not wasting too much time cleaning the press. Below are some shots from last weekend's class. The last one is a little poster print I did using only wood type. I printed about 20 and plan on putting them into the shop sometime next week.









Life has been crazy but fun with little Charlie in the household. It feels like we have a baby. We talk about her poo and have to get up in the middle of the night to check on her. And there's been much less blogging and blog-reading since Charlie's arrival, as most of our evenings are now spent playing with her. I uploaded a couple more pictures of her to my Charlie flickr set, so click on over if you need a dose of cuteness. Have a great weekend all!