This grumpy card is a sequel to my catnip holiday card. I’ve had some success selling the holiday card and wanted to create a card for all seasons.
Why is the cat grumpy? I’m guessing that my cat would be grumpy if he had to wear a clown nose. Your cat won’t be grumpy after you pull off the nose which is a catnip filled wool ball.
This was one of my smoothest printing projects. Usually when I print I’ve forgotten an important detail and need to jerry-rig something to accommodate my error. It made the process go quicker by choosing colors that didn’t need to be mixed. I used them straight from the ink tube. I printed slightly over 100 cards using 3 colors, 4 plates plus creasing for the fold. This added up to over 500 impressions. Something so simple can add up to a lot of work but I’m very pleased.
I’m selling this card on Etsy and will have it at an upcoming local pop-up.
When starting this project the one request I had from the groom was to incorporate the Chicago skyline. Florencia the bride and my former roommate had a few other comments; “I like polka-dots, I like birds, no matchy matchy”. The Polka-dots were no surprise to me since she even had them on her dress. I promise polka-dots on a wedding dress is just the right amount of sophistication and whimsy. That was my personal goal for the invite design.
For the other requests, rather than just putting a bird on it, I used one of her mothers bird sketches. Growing up Florencia always liked her bird drawings and I was happy to use something extra sentimental in the invitation. I suggested the orange envelopes to keep things from being to matchy matchy and because I couldn’t imagine orange not being part of Florencia’s wedding. Living together she brought the gift of orange into my life and I’ve embraced it as a color I like to have around.
As it should be, the final result was a reflection of both the bride and groom. I printed these invites with the assistance of Florencia in March and attended the wedding in early May.
Congratulations Andrew and Florencia!
I supplied files for Florencia to produce some extra items for the wedding.
Patricia Lebensohn’s bird drawings.
Paper: French Paper Company, Pop-Tone Whip Cream, 140lb Cover
Envelopes: French Paper Company, Butcher Orange
Inks: Pantone 7650 (aubergine), Pantone 383 (green), self mixed so not perfect
Metallic gold stripe tape.
Printing: Spent the afternoon after Thanksgiving showing my dad how the press works.
Paper: French Paper, Pop-Tone, Sweet Tooth, 140lb Cover
Ink: Tan Varnish (oil base)
I have a cat. I think I have a fairly healthy relationship with him and don’t see a future for myself as a crazy cat lady. I am inspired to find amusements for my feline friend. One of them turned into this card.
Under the nose.
Printing: About 4.5 hours on my letterpress
Paper: French Paper, Dur-O-Tone, Newsprint White, 80lb Cover
Ink: Black, Warm Red (oil base)
Noses: Made of wool and catnip and are meant to be pulled off to be chewed and mangled by the recipients cat.
The San Francisco Center for the Book Holiday Fair is coming up on December 10th. This will be my first time selling at a craft fair. I learned to print at SFCB so I’m happy to come full circle to sell there this year. Come check it out Noon - 5pm!
Some of the items I’ll have are my past holiday cards as well as some of the other masking tape cards I’ve been making this past year.
2009 Holiday Card, Print Gocco
2010 Holiday Card, Letterpress, First project printed on my press
Letterpress gift tags
Soon I’ll be posting images of the two cards I’m making this year. Because Christmas provides lots of reasons for present wrapping, tree trimming, and hall decking I’ll be posting here more often in December. Hope it keeps you inspired. Happy Holiday 2011!
This was a good excuse to use my letterpress and use up ink on the press from other projects.
Printed on Pearl White Letra
The month of May was filled with the letterpress printing of wedding invites I designed for a friend’s upcoming San Diego wedding. While it took a bit more time than I’d planned it was a pleasure to work on this project and provided many learning lessons for me on my press.
This was not my first printing project on my small press but it was my first complicated printing job. In all I printed 6 plates for a 4 piece invite which included a folding card (3 plates), bookmark (1 plate), rsvp (1 plate), and envelope (1 plate).
I was able to use a friend’s C&P treadle press for my first time using folding rule.
The diagonal quarter point lines above left were filling in to much so I had one plate remade during this project. I’m learning that there are some limitations to the deep relief box car plates that I use with my press. I will also not attempt quarter point dotted lines again either as they tend to break.
Paper: Pearl White; 110 lb Crane Lettra and A7 envelopes
Ink: PMS 072, PMS 158*
*I mixed the PMS 158 myself which provided one more lesson. The Lettra paper soaked up way more of the ink than I expected so I was inking the press every 10 prints and furiously mixing more ink as I went along. Luckily the orange is only seen once in each invitation because the color did shift from the first print to the last. The blue was used straight from the tube so no mixing needed.
