Our One Heart Valentine Card, listed here on Etsy.
Hearts for Your Sweetheart
January 15th, 2010 § 0
Our Hearts for your Sweetheart Card, listed here on Etsy.
Ivory
January 7th, 2010 § 1
MyFonts just named Ivory one of the top ten fonts of 2009 and the ornamented font of the year. From the moment we saw Ivory, we were captivated by its beautiful swashes. We utilized Ivory for our personalized stationery gifts that we gave to friends and family over the holiday.
Letterpress Tip: Registration
January 3rd, 2010 § 0
This year we will be sharing some tips that we’ve learned since we started letterpress printing. We’ve met so many helpful printers in the letterpress printing community, that we’d love to impart our knowledge to the next crop of new printers.
Here’s a quick tip to make multi-color registration easier if you do not use registration/crop marks in your designs. Use a transparency sheet to create a test print so that you can align your other colors. You can then measure using your pica, how far to shift your plate left/right or up/down on your base. Wipe the sheet down, run another test print, and check to make sure everything is registered correctly. The transparencies are resilient enough to use over and over again.
Printing During a SoCal Winter
January 2nd, 2010 § 0
There’s nothing that puts in me in a good mood to print like a great track of songs. In San Diego, we woke up to a 73 degree winter that felt like summer. So we had to load up some of our favorite Reggae, Ska and dub So-Cal/Hawaiian bands into the Ipod and just planned a day of printing until the sun went down.
“Love You Madly” - Cake (from Sac, but we made an exception)
“Garden Grove” - Sublime
“My Town” - Buck-O-Nine
“Bring Me Up” - Pepper
“2AM” - Slightly Stoopid
“Baby Girl” - Common Sense
“Spiderwebs” - No Doubt
Shop Here: Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella
December 30th, 2009 § 2
Nestled in Melrose Ave in Los Angeles is the Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella. Only one out of two in the US with the main Pharmacy in Florence, Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella has been in existence since the 1400’s. Their packaging has maintained it’s signature old world look. Some of their remedies are still created using their original formulas.
On this particular trip to LA, I was able to procure some of their Rose Water. Great as an antiseptic, relieves tired muscles in the bath, or as a linen rinse!
Santa Maria Novella: Official Boutique in Los Angeles
8411 Melrose Place
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Respiration: Vampires
November 22nd, 2009 § 0
With New Moon from the Twilight saga coming out this weekend, it was only appropriate that we featured Evangilynn’s “Twilight 21″ Holiday Masquerade invitations. Evangilynn is a huge fan of the Twilight series and wanted to throw a fun 21st birthday bash in “vampiric” fashion. We created a custom crest for Evangilynn, similar to the Volturi crest worn by the Volturi family in the movie. The invitations were three coloured and printed on Crane’s Lettra #110 in Fluorescent White.
Tip: If you have a design that has a solid block of black, adding either red or reflex blue to the black ink will make it print darker. This helps to minimize the “graying” effect that typically happens with black ink. In this run, we added a little bit of red ink to the black. Another option that can be done is to dampen the paper to absorb the black ink better, this also allows the use of less ink. There are different ways this can be done. One way is to wet every other sheet of paper in the stack and place into a plastic bag overnight. Another way is to create a box and use a humidor to dampen the paper.
The 4 P’s
October 19th, 2009 § 0
Rita contacted us about creating a set of personalized stationery that integrated some of her favorite things: pop art, purple, pink and pictures.
Late Night Run
October 17th, 2009 § 0
During late night runs, I sit on a beach chair in our garage studio and watch movies until it’s my turn up at bat on the Vandercook. Here’s what it looks like from my beach chair:
That’s Lee Jay wearing his back brace.
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For reals...We are.
