I'm Melting

I can barely stand to do anything in this weather. It's crazy Hot! I planned on making a little light box to take better photos for my Etsy site, but I realized quickly it was too hot to play with Hot lights. Our Fridge broke this weekend and our landlord replaced it while we were at work today. I lugged our items from the extra basement fridge to place in our used, much smaller fridge. ugh. Then had to put our hallway back together. It's mostly our storage area which we moved to the living room to make room for the swapping of fridges. Sigh, I'm soaked and my brain doesn't work anymore.

I did pull out lots of Letterpress items from my first prints in school 10 years ago. They will show up in posts to come. I came across this book as well. It should be a nice read on our road trip out of the city for the 4th of July!

The Comfort of Assembly

Tonight was Invitation Completion night. 4 of us made an amazing assembly line. Gluing all the invitations to the folder, then assembling the pieces, folding, stickering, and sealing the envelope. It took a few hours, but it was good company and much fun. The end result is really great and came together well. They should be in the invitees hands this week. I love the process of seeing an idea from creation to end. It was really fun brainstorming with one of my closest friends about her wedding invitations and making it happen.

I think I take solitude in assembly lines. The steady rhythm that your body and mind fall into when doing the same thing over and over again in strangely comforting. I'm very familiar with assembly lines. I worked at Honda in the motorcycle and car plant in Marysville, Ohio for 2 summers during college. I now work on a different kind of line. I retouch photos, mostly vintage photos where we clean the dirt and stains away. It's very meticulous work, but repetitive like many factories. I can see the ups and down of this kind of work. In one way, you don't have to spend much brain power during the actual tasks, so you can dream up and process creative ideas or evening plans. While retouching, I can listen to pod casts, talk to coworkers or chat on the phone while working. The negatives are you have to actively try to keep your brain active or you can easily become a lump in a chair on auto pilot. It's difficult to find a balance.

I enjoy the repetitiveness of printing. Most of the brain activity and creativity is in the beginning steps; drawing the designs, getting plates made, or putting together vintage blocks and type. After all the parts are locked up and everything on the press is set correctly, it's smooth, steady sailing from there on out. I've been talking about getting a clothesline with a pulley, so I can sit on a stool and just pump the press without moving to hang the pieces. This shows my laziness and also the results of thinking a lot while doing the monotonous printing.

It's all very rewarding though. As I print, I count how many I've made. It's awesome to see the number grow. When I'm really excited about a piece, I want to print a ton. When printing cards, I have to decide how many I should print before I start, depending on how many I think will sell. When I worked on cars and motorcycles, I walked by the finished product every day that I had a part in creating. While retouching photos, I constantly flip from the background layer to the working layer, seeing the progress I've made. Instant gratification in all cases. I love the "I made this" feeling. If I have a message to you as a reader, it's Go create something today. Whether it's baking cookies or a whipping up a great piece of art. The high of creating is awesome.

Raised Printing

I just read in the Kelsey manual, Raised Printing like Engraving or Embossing. Sounds like I would just need Raised printing compound. Doing a quick Google search didn't bring back any exciting results, but I'm going to look more into it. Just shake a little powder on the wet ink and place near a heat source to achieve raised print.

If this doesn't work, I'd like to use more gold and silver ink. Spice up the Holiday cards this year! Love these prints by Lock Up Your Ladies. The colors and paper choices are great, plus now I have the song in my head.

Still Blushing

I’m still so embarrassed about the happenings of last evening. As my husband and I were walking home from the gym, we see billowing steam or smoke coming from a box like contraption on the curb about a block from our apartment. We kinda looked at one another and contemplated what it could be. “I mean, what was that?” came out of my mouth twice. I thought we should report it to someone, so like any good New Yorker that reads “If you see Something, say Something” at least once a day, I picked up the phone and called 311. The 311 operator stayed on the line, but transferred me to 911, who then called the fire department. Three operators are on the line asking me questions and I said, I think it is steam or smoke coming out of a 2 x 3 foot box at this address. They take my number and hang up. About 2 minutes later, Coury and I hear the sirens. I was impressed with their response time. Then I get a private number call and it’s the Firemen, they can’t find the box. I say I’ll be right there. I walk out my front door to the sight of 4 Fire Trucks and around 20 Fully suited Firemen at the end of my block. I walk up to them and say it’s right over here. Of course by now, nothing is spewing out of the box. The chief Firemen who called says, “You mean this air conditioner?” as he shines his light on the harmless looking piece of junk on the curb. I said “yeah, but before it looked really ominous and smelled awful” I say to the young firemen beside me, “Sorry, I just called 311 to report it, I didn’t thing they’d send 4 trucks” He just shrugged and said it wasn’t a big deal. Big Fire Chief said it was better to be safe than sorry and I sheepishly snuck away and headed back to my apartment, feeling silly all night for having bothered calling and wasting our tax dollars.

This incident got me thinking about all the Blushing moments in my life and how important they were in shaping who I am today.

Many uncomfortable, red-cheeked moments occurred during Art School critiques. The most memorable Class was a Fundamentals class with a typically “slightly off” teacher that wanted to assign vague projects and expect amazing results. Since I attended a huge state school, there were a huge variety of students, all different ages and talent levels. I felt like I was very behind in knowing myself as an artist at this time. I still had my feelers out for who I wanted to be and what I wanted to achieve. They were so harsh. I remember having to hold back tears and concentrate on breathing. I developed a thick skin fairly quickly. Every new medium seemed to be the same thing. It’s one of my faults. I always want to launch right into doing, not so much the plotting and planning of the final piece. I always liked the process of creating. If only there were limitless time and I could fiddle with this and that all day long.

I’ve had a few blushing moments when I started Printing too. It took a while to find my way. The first thing I printed without rollers. Not my best work. I used a hand roller because the rollers were on order and I wanted to print Thank you notes for my friends wedding present. It was a great first project, but would have been so much better post proper rollers. This swimming card was one of my first as well. I drew the lily pads in Illustrator; they were part of my first photopolymer plate purchase. The swimmer block was an Ebay purchase. I still have a few cards as I was over zealous and printed a shit ton. I have a soft spot for them. You can see how over inked the swimmer is and how unevenly the lily pads printed. I might reprint them now to see the difference after learning a few tricks. At that time, I was testing many different papers too. I loved this orange, but it was a little too glossy for cards and a pain to score and fold.

So many blushing moments have been painfully etched into my brain, but I wouldn’t trade them. I don’t think I’ve repeated too many of them. You learn from mistakes in life. In a way, College was easier than grown up life. I don’t have a team of opinionated artists to tell me what they think of my creations before they go out on display for the whole world to see. I have to be my own critic, which is very hard sometimes. I hope to continue blushing throughout my life and continue to learn from them.

Bonus: Favorite onscreen blushing moment happens in one of my all time favorite Movies, Man in the Moon. Resse Witherspoon puckers up for Jason London and it’s so awkward it takes you back to the way us girls squeamishly felt at 12 and 13.

The Joy of the Dance

After a recharge of knowledge from Boxcar and Briars Press, printing seems much simpler again, almost like dancing. At least I was dancing around my "print shop" or small little multi-use room last night after successfully finishing my friend's wedding invitations. I definitely get a surge of happiness and the urge to Yippee at the top of my lungs when Printing goes smoothly.

Dancing really isn't that simple. Similar to printing.. when you remember every single step, it looks easy. My husband and I took a class to learn the Charleston a few years back. The only thing I remember about the Charleston now, is that you swivel on the balls of your feet a lot. It was fun after you worked out the kinks. Freestyle, cutting the rug is more our style.

The goal last night was to print the orange flower arrangements and that I did with my little helper, the Bride. The Flowers I drew in Illustrator and made Photo polymer plates from the files. It's just amazing what a little masking tape can do. In past runs with polymer plates, I would get ink on the edges of my wooden bases which would then print little lines on the paper... frustrating me to no end. Using a few layers of masking tape to adjust the roller height cleared the problem right up. In addition to the correct amount of Tympan, making sure the handle goes all the way down, and after adjusting my impression screws earlier in the week, we had all the right steps for jazzy printing. With a little Swing music going in the background, we cranked them out and hung them to dry. Right now the little creations appear to be dancing in the breeze from the fan.

Up next, matching Thank You notes! I'm going to take a break to print a few other projects first. I have a few months until she'll need to formally thank anyone via note. She said many Thank you's last night :)

Class at The Arm

A friend just purchased an assortment of Hyccreative Cards for Favors at his wedding. I'm using the money to learn more about the craft and booked a workshop for July 11th. The Arm in Williamsburg offers Letterpress classes for The Vandercook and C&P Pilot. Since I've only pieced together information to build and work my press, it will be nice to see how others do it. Maybe I've been doing it all wrong!

I would really like to print larger pieces. I hope to rent Vandercook time soon at The Arm.

http://thearmnyc.com/information/letterpress_classes

Peas & Carrots

As I'm reading the manual for my Kelsey and other information out there, I keep seeing "Use no more ink than the size of a pea to start with." The manual was first published in 1952 and I'm wondering if a pea was the same size as it is in 2010. I've tried a few times to use less ink and it hasn't worked well. I'd say I use about 10 peas worth. I wonder if this only pertains to oil inks. I started out using oil ink, but couldn't stand to do the clean up. My print shop is in the middle room of our Brooklyn Railroad apartment and the first night I used the cleaning solution for oil inks, I woke up repeatedly all night. I was dreaming that I was slowly poisoning us and kept checking to see if my husband was still breathing. I immediately ordered water based inks from Faust Ink. They've been working lovely ever since. I do think I tend to over saturate the ink wheel when using metal type, but the polymer plates seem to require a little more.

I've been super entertained by this manual. Taken out of context, some phrases are kinda funny.
Type is "off its feet" made me smile.

All this pea talk gave me a craving for the little sweet veggies. Along with carrots, onions, and chicken, it made a delightful dinner.

Relearning what I already learned once or twice.

I'd really like to do what I love and I love printing little creations on my Kelsey Platen Press. I dream of owning a larger press to make larger creations. I purchased my own press in the summer of 2006 not knowing much more than what I learned my Senior year of college. It's been a fun experience. I've gone through phases of productivity and a year I barely touched ink. In an attempt to get better, I've gone back to basics. I'm re-reading the info I found 4 years ago online and in books, because I don't remember.

Today, my original frustrations and triumphs all came crashing back to me. I'm on the last leg of printing my dear friend's wedding invitations, but I didn't like the way the main invite came out. I don't know if I used too much ink, to much padding, not enough, how's my roller height? oh yeah, I am cheap and opted out of buying a roller gauge 4 years ago. Today, I shelled out the $22 and ordered one. I also found a great post about adding masking tape to the edges of the chase so the rollers only "kiss" the type. I like the idea of kissing my type. After a boring 8 hours at my day job, I visited the gym, showered, prepared a meal for my husband and myself, and dove into figuring out how to make this kiss happen so my Christina could have the most beautiful invitations possible. It went down like this... I reset up the type in the chase, replacing the o's that I borrowed for the Friday night invitation. I then applied about 6 layers of tape on each side of the chase to raise the rollers. And after reading the actual instruction manual to my press for the first time, I completely unscrewed the impression screws... deciding to start over. Big mistake! After having trouble getting a decent print, and adjusting the screws and padding for the 30th time, I remembered vowing to never touch those things again. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I guess. I plowed through 15 sheets of the paper I cut for the second time until finally... awe... a perfect print, but now I'd wasted so much ink that I had to mix up a little more. The results are totally worth it though. Held up to the prints I did last week, they are a million times better. yay! I will just have to remember to go back and read what I've wrote next time I have the same problem. I made those rollers kiss that type and now I want to kiss my little Kelsey.


"I love it when a plan comes together!" ~ John "Hannibal" Smith