Baby Announcements are for Sale!

Up on Etsy for purchase now! Thank you to my dear friends that let me use these adorable photos of their kids :)

hyc Creative now at Honey and Hazel!

hyc Creative cards and bookmarks are now sold at
Honey and Hazel homegrown in Brooklyn

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The school themed wedding invitations are finished and in the couple's hands! The Bride let me know they received them and that they are thrilled. That makes me very happy indeed. I had a difficult time when printing due to the same Staples cutting debacle as the baby announcements. I'm so happy I had extra paper and was able to print and cut more. They may be my favorite invitations yet.

Sometimes I have a difficult client, other times a difficult task, or things just don't go right. The bride and groom in this case were wonderful. They had a loose idea of wanting their invitations to look like a grade card and school themed. I came up with red lined paper with a handwriting font. I thought it would look like they were all handwritten with pencil. I later changed the paper design to the red and blue lines. The bride suggested this old book font. I definitely think it was the better choice. I redrew a stamp I found on ebay for the schoolhouse.Once everything was approved, I printed the lines on Royal Cotton Natural 80lb. Cover stock on my Cannon printer and took them to Staples to get cut down to size. The girl working told me their blade was dull and that's why she added an inch of green cardstock to the stack.

When I got home and noticed how wackado the cutting was, I first exploded. I calmed down and was determined to make it work. The invitations would just be different lengths, but I could line them up on the top on the press. Once I started printing, I realized it would not work. They were cut wrong on the sides as well and the text did not sit perfectly on the line. I printed the lines again and took them to the Kinkos I usually get my things cut. I ended up having to cut the plate in 4 sections to get the font positioned correctly.


Once all the kinks were worked out, the printing was smooth sailing. I'm really happy with the results. They are printed on a natural paper. Along with the font, they have a pretty cool vintage feel.

I will try not to print on lined paper again. I was able to use the scrap paper for this graduation card. I just had to trim each card by hand after printing.


It was a challenging and fun learning experience all around. I wish the bride and groom many years of happiness and hope their guests ask where their invitations were printed. With all my rushing and troubleshooting, I forgot to print my website on the back.

Pressing away

This past weekend was an Extreme printing weekend. If I wasn't printing, I was retouching for a freelance gig. My back hurt by Sunday, but I have a room full of cards and that makes me smile! I'm prepping for Fair season and a meeting with Honey and Hazel this week.

I was able to print 2 ideas I've had splashing around in my head for months. 2 new "lines". One is Floral initials and the other is my Silhouette line. I started with movie quotes with the silhouette. I have a few more in the works, but would love to hear more.



Here are the Florals:

So as not to leave out the fellas, I'd like to print a few in black with my art deco wood block too.

The first of the silhouette cards came out quite nicely too!

Feels good to Create. If there were only more hours in the weekend!

Gocco Gone Wrong

I was excited to use my Gocco for the first time today and try to burn and print a new brocade design. I watched 9 YouTube videos in preparation. I printed the paper at work on the HP Laser Jet. With the paper cut down to size, I set up the gocco and burned the screen. In every video the original just peels off the screen, mine however stuck. I had to peel a strip at a time and use a spray bottle to wet the paper to get it all off. I was able to push a small amount of ink through, but something is obviously not right. I backtracked all of my steps and watched 2 videos again. I'm pretty sure I did everything right. The only thing I can think of is that the Paper I used may be a multi-use paper with a bit of gloss and maybe it melted to the screen. I'm going to xerox a print out on normal paper and see if that changes things. I hate to waste another screen and 2 more bulbs if I'm doing something else wrong.

Anyone have any ideas or recommendations?

Old Lessons Resurface

I've been brainstorming packaging, invitations, new personalized stationary and I got to thinking about how much scoring, cutting, and assemblying I did in college. Time seemed so much more available then and I worked a ton in college. I was working 4-6 shifts a week at a bar and grille, keeping up with my studies, and socializing heavily.... I still had time to do this project. Of course, I was younger and wasn't producing mass quantities then. These days, my evenings now seem to fly by with a blink of the eye. Just when I get rolling on something, it's time for bed. Who needs sleep though, right?I dug this book out to use as a bit of motivation. I love printing on fibrous handmade papers and hope to make my own one day soon. There involved so much folding, Kinkos runs, and paper jammed in the copier. I remember how fun it was to set up all the different fonts. I wish I could go back and print these with less ink though. From what I remember we had to chose 5 objects and make a book from it. Mine were pretty much objects from the 5 parts of my life at the time. I scanned in all the objects to create the fold out imagery and set the text with lead type in the Letterpress room. It was great fun merging digital printing and Letterpress for this book.

1. My family, The object must have been a rose from flowers my parents sent: My mom sent amazing notes when I was in school and still does. She always wrote "Study, Study, Study" back then.
2.My oldest friends: The broken wing of my clay gargoyle that was purchased with high school friends. We didn't communicate well until Friendster and Facebook came into our lives years later.
3. My twin sister: She sent me the eucalyptus leaves. She had moved to California that year and it might as well have been the moon. I missed her greatly.4. My love interest: We met on Valentine's Day and he kept giving me those little candy hearts and was constantly making mine heart swoon and break.5. My Purple house college Housemates and friends: Annie gave me the Chinese coin for good luck. They were my everyday life and my main source of friendship and craziness. That year was quite hazy.
It's fun to go back and look at these things. I often blush at how green and young I was. I constantly wish I'd known more at the time I've created anything. I always think it could have been better if given more time, planning, and patience. I've never been a patient person and want immediate results. I've been getting much better about it, but can always improve. It might be time to re-create things I've done in my past, but better. I encourage everyone to go back and take a gander at things they created 10 years ago and reminisce about the lessons learned. Create on, my friends!

Sunshine State Inspiration

I spent last weekend on Fort Myers Beach with my husband's family. It did me a world of good to steal away from this cold New York winter for a few days. It was relaxing and gluttonous. I feel reinvigorated from nice amounts of Vitamin D. I can now get back to filling out fair applications, tax forms, and Create more stuff.

Creating has been on my mind the most. I've been toying with making a brocade for a while. I have a vision of printing a copper brocade with my new gocco and Letterpress my silhouettes in black on top. It will be as though the couples (my friends) that I've redrawn are communicating in our local bar, Sweet Ups. Well, that's the plan anyway. It always changes. Here's the brocade design.
I also realized that I could broaden my inspiration some. We saw so much beauty in Florida. Why aren't I drawing Palm trees, flip flops, and sea shells? Palm tress evoke a sunnier emotion to me than say an Oak tree with "Miss You" I've been concentrating too much on my comfort zone. More designs to come!