the card society: october

One last post for the month... on the final day of October, my final installment of cards from The Card Society arrived.


I loved getting cards in the mail each month, and have since seen satsuma press offer something similar. But for me, the time to print my own is getting a bit closer, so... time to save my pennies.

happy halloween!

I love this letterpress card by Hello! Lucky, inspired, at least a little, by Dia de los Muertos:


San Francisco's annual procession happens on Monday, November 2, 2009 at 7pm at 24th & Bryant Streets, in the Mission District of San Francisco.

polaroid notes.

Polaroids are experiencing a sort of Renaissance right now, even as the remaining stock of film is pretty expensive. I never had my own Polaroid camera, although my mother managed to score some cameras and film for our wedding:

(photos by our photographer, Pei-Pei Ketron of Penelope's Loom)

We had our guests take pictures of themselves with the cameras and slide them into a guestbook, where they also wrote a note. It was really successful and fun to look through later.

Polaroids remain popular, I think, because they capture the mood or feelings of a moment. The minute details of an image become less important, and certainly less clear. A Polaroid is like a memory; fuzzy but evocative. So, what could be better than the marriage between Polaroid photos and note cards?

Chronicle Books has released a curated set of Polaroid photos as note cards. Here's a little preview of some of my favorites:





Even better, these Polaroid notes by Fieryeyed Photography on Etsy, are images of Italy, which is still my reigning favorite country despite not having been in 10 years. I came across these thanks to Pia Jane Bijkerk's blog.


As much as I love letterpress printing, there are some things a platen press just can't do.

fun with fotos.

Getting my press up and running isn't translating well to interesting blog posts these days. While I am ordering small parts and supplies (tympan paper, keys, quoins, ink knives, pins, etc.), these items won't make sense to anyone who isn't using a letterpress.

I've also run into a few roadblocks (suppliers with backlogs, slow responses, a leaking living room (the press is currently covered with a drop cloth), and a computer out of disk space (hello, small, trial versions of Illustrator and InDesign!), I am starting to worry I won't make my Christmas deadline, but we shall see.

In the meantime, I've been having a lot of fun learning more about photography. I bought a mini-Diana camera, which takes 35mm film instead of 120, and for lack of my own Polaroid, I've been using Rollip.com to create falsies.

Here are a few. They capture bits of my Fall - my fascination with the light, a trip to city hall with my husband to file a friend's marriage certificate, where we incidentally got stuck in a fire drill, and, as ever, taking walks around my beautiful, perfect city ...







While I love those twilight and morning hours, it's about time for the haunting hour:




Happy Halloween! This year we're staying in and watching scary movies, for which I am grateful and excited.

um, the best thing(s) ever.

Sometimes I am a little slow on the uptake. I only recently came across the design blog poppytalk which has Font Fridays!

Free fonts are just about as exciting as the new Man Shops Globe series on the Sundance Channel (which I don't get, but found on iTunes), which features Keith Johnson, a buyer for Anthropologie, on his shopping travels. I am pretty sure this show will incite terrible rumblings of wanderlust and quite possibly a few online purchases.

But back to the fonts. The fonts featured on poppytalk all originate from dafont.com, which is another great discovery. You see, for me, since I am not going to be using lead type, I can print with any of these fonts, and while I seem to be addicted to sweet Caslon, it might be good to branch out.

Check it:


Cameras!


Revolution!


Cursive!


and, apt for the season, Fall foliage!

Too much fun. I think I just overwhelmed my laptop with free type and images, but what are Fridays for if not for discovery, distraction and.... um, drinks! Happy Friday.

progress report.

I finally ordered some additional parts: trucks (these attach to the ends of the rollers - I had 3 of the 4 I needed, but like tires, it was better to purchase new ones as a pair), the boxcar deep relief base (which is what polymer plates sit on instead of locking in lead or wood type), and a roller gauge (to make sure everything is at the right height for printing). Next, I ship the roller cores out to have them recovered in rubber.

With all my focus on trees in the last couple days, including some reading I did on Paper University about the trees grown and used for paper-making, it was funny to me that Boxcar Press had an option to purchase a tree for one dollar at the end of their ordering flow.


So, I did. I can't say enough how thorough and helpful Boxcar's site is for new and potential printers, and maybe even for well-established ones. I finally spent some time perusing their FAQs and tutorials, their online printing manuals and so forth. There's also a link to: Flurry: A Journal Among the Printers.

trees made of paper.

Usually, it's the other way around.


Grove - Revolving Trees
Edition of 12 + 1 Prototype

Revolving paper trees planted on a non revolving paper and wood console Table - see these in motion at the Raw-Edges Design Studio site.



Skinny Laminx makes paper cut outs and screen prints... her tea towels are wanted (by me). Particularly the spoons.


Yuken Teruya cuts paper trees out of everyday objects and trash. There are some great and surprising photos on her website.

Here she's cut into book pages. I tend to like art that involves books, like strategically painting over some words on a page of an old book so that the words read differently than intended, but then I also feel a little sad and sorry for the book. Or maybe, for the writer.



Just in case you wanted to make your own paper trees... you can! (I love the Internet!) There's a tutorial online at A Little Hut.