Happy New Year!

Whew...now that all the holiday craziness is over I welcome the calm of January. Time to reassess, re-motivate, recreate, and blog! First up, I'd like to announce my new blog Under The Wild Rose As Weasels, where "A city mouse with a country soul [me] attempts to mitigate the impact of 2 humans, 2 cats, 2 cars, and 2 big ass TVs by implementing realistic earth-friendly changes." It's been a blast so far.

As my first Tweedle Press offering for the new year, I've just made available these lovelies:


That's right, now you can get scrumptious letterpress printed stationery, on sheets that are recycled individually by hand from your own junk mail! Choose from unique designs to be personalized with your name. This is almost certainly the most eco-friendly, extraordinary way to reuse gift wrap and other scrap paper from your home.

I'm really happy with the designs I've come up with for the stationery


Tomorrow I plan to go into production on a few of the things that got pushed to the side during the holidays. I'll continue to release Personal Recycling products, and will be coming up with some spring-y designs soon too.

Pulp & Press Soundtrack: "Hooting & Hollering" (Wild Beasts).

Page's #10 Cards

Note To Self: When you proclaim "I think I'm getting the hang of this," the letterpress gods shall show you otherwise, and chuckle to themselves.
After Friday's successful prints, I went in to work on the big press on Saturday. I mixed a nice orange, I taped the rails, I took some ink off after getting a little slather happy, I got a good impression, and I thought everything was swell. After a few prints I started to notice the tiniest dusting of orange bits on the prints in areas the plate didn't touch. I wiped off the plate and the speckles moved. I taped the rails, I untaped the rails, I adjusted the packing, all the while becoming increasingly frustrated with the tiny speckles plaguing me. Finally, I decided to call it a day with not a lot to show for it. As I began cleaning the press, I noticed that the handy cheapo shop rag I had used to wipe some of the ink off the press mid way through the print tests was leaving little bits of fiber on the platen, which were then transferred to the rollers. The bits were then stuck to the ink on the rollers, picked up more ink from the platen as they rolled, trailed across the plate, and voila - orangey snow effect on the prints.

At this point I was already halfway done cleaning, and didn't fancy a run to Home Depot for lint free cloths, another inking, another printing, and another cleaning. So, I came back today to finish the job. I was very careful this time to make sure there was hardly any dust or rag lint on the platen or rollers before inking, and sure enough my friendly orange bits disappeared. I suppose that's one more thing to add to my ever growing mental list of letterpress troubleshooting tidbits. Man, by the time I'm 80 I'm going to rock at this! Here are the results of my 2 days' labor:


Some beautiful #10 note cards in chartreuse and pool, with a nice deep orange print color, for Page. Next purchase - a print drying rack to prevent ink transfer onto the backs of the cards. Blah! Other than that, they're gorgeous.

I just realized that I've now printed for 3 days in a row. Holy crap. And I'm not even remotely joking about letterpress being a workout. Since I continue to be timid about using the motor or my 8 x 12, there is a lot of wheel pushing and foot planting that goes on in addition to the cleaning. You know those little diagrams on the weight machines at the gym showing you "muscles trained"? Here's what one would look like if they had a platen press at the gym, based on where I'm currently feeling the most pain. 200 reps!


Pulp & Press Soundtrack 6/21/09: "Freetime" (Kenna), "Map Of The Problematique" (Muse), "Feiticeira" (Deftones).

Somebody Stop Me!

Another custom job finished tonight - this time some A2 stationery on 100% recycled "Eco White" paper with jet black ink.

Since the press was still mostly set up from the previous job on Friday, I barely had to do any makeready. I can't decide whether I like printing pre-cut or crop marks jobs better - they both have their advantages and disadvantages. I like that I don't have to worry about alignment with crop marks (post-cut) jobs, as long as they're one color. However, I'm always worried that I'm not cutting things exactly the same way afterwards. With pre-cut paper I have to spend a bit more time making sure everything is straight and spaced properly, but one that's done they're all ready to go without anything to do afterwards.

After I finished the stationery, I baked a bunch of these Hazelnut Rosemary Jam Cookies for my upcoming high tea party, which are to die for. Now I've just got to clean the press and I can finally relax for the night. A run of 100+ stationery cards in about an hour? In the timeless words of Flava Flav, "Yeeaaahhh boooy!"

Busy, busy!

Well, it's finally back to business after several weeks of vacation and general discombobulation. Currently I've got four custom print jobs I'm working on: 2 stationery, 1 calling card, 1 menu (more on that later), and I'm almost at the stage where I can scrunch all the images together to make film then plates. Once the plates are made, I'll be sure to provide updates on the print progress of each. I'm hoping to have all 4 done in a few weeks, in addition to a stock item I'll be re-running.

These "Yay" cards are from my "Peggins" series, which was one of the first sets of designs I came up with for my store. Since it's graduation season, I'll be printing up a whole bunch of them for sale:

If anybody wants to buy any - please let me know! I've actually printed these before, but it was my first ever try on a platen press and so they didn't come out quite the way I intended. Hopefully, now that I've got my own presses, I'll be able to spend an assinine amount of time perfecting the registration and colors.

Speaking of colors, I've have finally ordered some of Van Son's new VS Zero ink through Fuji. It sounds fantastically "green," and is vegetable based. According to the techs, here's an approximate breakdown:

Rapeseed Oil - Approx. 46%
Linseed Oil - Approx. 18%
Oticica Oil - Approx. 6%
Pigment (Dry) - Approx. 20%
Additives - Approx. 7%

The hope is that I'll be able to clean this ink off the presses using only vegetable oil or other non-toxic cleansers. Unfortunately, the inks aren't going to be made in the regular lineup of Pantone colors, so I'll have to see what I can do with mixing CMYK myself. I guess I'm sort of confused as to how I might go about this, seeing as how CMYK inks are intended for 4 color process prints (i.e. 4 different plates, registered perfectly). I've asked the folks on Briar Press if they have any suggestions for how I might do this, or if I'm insane for even contemplating it.

In other news...after my most recent meeting with a business counselor, I penned "The Retroactive Roadmap To Tweedle Press." My counselor suggested that I write out exactly where I'd like to be with my business a year from now, and then works backwards from that to create some goals and milestones for myself. It was extremely eye opening, and let me know that I'll really have to get moving sooner than I thought with starting to take more days per week to work on the business. Scary, but exciting! As soon as I've got a rough draft of the business plan, I'll talk more about it here. For now though, I've got a date with the Chicago Public Library to do some research on my target market, and these are some rough upcoming dates for the rest of this year:

June: ink research/testing, finish business plan, print custom projects
July: new website launch, print stock items
August: begin marketing, start to take web orders!
September: go down to 3 days a week at current job (yikes!)
October: start marketing and taking holiday orders
November: print and ship holiday orders
December: end of year money stuff, print stock items

Pulp & Press Soundtrack 5/29/09: Bon Jovi (Livin' On A Prayer). Don't laugh - I played Rock Band last weekend and it's been stuck in my head ever since. HELP ME!!!

Success!

The first website I ever designed was for my band in New York, and on it I created little animated dancing bodies with photos of our heads grafted on. That's how I'm really feeling right now after the first successful print on my big letterpress - like a silly, giddy, repetitively dancing cartoon character with my head on top. YES!!!


The throw-off arm is still a little sticky, but workable after I loosened the bolt holding the throw off pin circle. I sprayed a little WD-40 in there, and now at least the pulling of the throw-off arm forward (to print) is relatively smooth. I still need to work on what's making the pushing of the arm backward (trip) stick, but this is great progress.

As for the throw-off arm in "print" position making the press stop (see the video from last week), this time I tried running the press without the chase in first. No problem! Luckily, as I was wandering around inspecting the grippers before putting the chase in I noticed just a bit of ink on one of the grippers. It would appear that one of the gripper arms had been nicking just the very end of my Boxcar base, thus preventing a print and the press from moving further. So, this will officially be my:

moment for the week. After all the lovely advice I received from Rich at Front Room Press, I guess at least I'm glad I didn't have to try and start adjusting all those things.

I got to do a bunch of exciting makeready, cutting out various shapes to put behind my little dead things on the stationery. The finished pieces probably have a little too much impression and have a few breaks in the lines, but the ink coverage is pretty perfect if I do say so myself. I'm considering naming my presses after various characters from Alice In Wonderland, given that the name of my shop is Tweedle Press. Cheshire? Jabberwocky? Mad Hatter? I'll have to see what of their personalities begins to shine through.

Finally, I would like to say that in the future I intend for not all of my posts to be quite so technical and letterpress geek. I'd like to post about some stuff that would be of interest to others as well, so look for entries on the following topics in the near future:

• Starting A Small Business
• The Creative Process
• Finding A Niche
• Work/Creative Environment

Pulp & Press Soundtrack 4/10/09: Life In Technicolor ii (Coldplay). You must check out this video - it's hysterical.

And So It Begins...

The water based inks don't come in Pantone mixable colors, so I decided just to pick 4 basic colors to test with. There could be some issues with post-drying smearage, if the prints are handled by anyone with "sweaty hands," so I didn't want to invest too much in a lot of the stuff just yet.





I finally sent in my Dead Things artwork for film and plates, and picked it all up from The Evanston Print & Paper Shop today! They look great of course. I cut up one of the beast bones stationery for test printing on my Pilot, and stuck it to my brand new Boxcar base. I did a quick first lockup in the chase, but realized after it was in the press that it needed to be shifted so that the base and plate were in the upper right hand corner. I'm still not quite used to the idea of printing with a platen press where I'll need to use gague pins to hold my paper in place, as I've got much more "real" experience on a Vandercook. I'm taking things really slowly because I do NOT want to dent my base.

Anyway, so finally I got the lock looking good so that the gague pins could sit in the lower left hand corner of the tympan paper and not hit the base, which is in the upper right hand corner of the chase. I started to realize it was going to be hard to get everything exact with this particular print because I've only got about 1/4" between the print end and the edge of the page. Also at 5.5" x 8.5", this size paper is really pushing what the Pilot can do - so this stationery might be better left for my 8 x 12.

Regardless of whether I continue with this big print or test something smaller, I've still got to figure out how to prevent my grippers from smashing into the base. Supposedly I ought to be able to turn the little cranks to loosen the gripper arms and adjust them, but they're in a really awkward position and extremely tight. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to loosen them, so I posted on Briar Press and will hopefully get some suggestions.

Brad suggested that it also seems like my new rollers may be a bit oversized. They're even being lifted off the rails as they pass over the chase, so I may have to investigate taping up the rails to prevent over-inking and roller sticking. Oh, the troubleshooting begins!

In more successful news, the other day I went about trying to make some paper that remained consistent in color and thickness. I decided to stick with mostly black and white junk mail like credit card offers (though they are fewer these days...), and it actually tured out pretty well. After following some drying advice from a group of paper makers, my press bar / sponge time was greatly reduced and I came out with fairly flat, nice sheets.

My favorite thing about recycling paper is that if you don't blend it up TOO much, you're left with a few letters scattered here and there.

The Benefit Of Working At Home

I'll just let these photos speak for themselves:

Today I worked on cleaning up the images for the gift tags, coasters, stationery, and envelopes in my "Dead Things" series. I need to have 3 sets of film/plates made, so I filled in the extra space with 2 cards I'm working on for the "In A Word" series. Here's what it all looks like squished up together for the film:



After the plates get made, I'll cut it up and stick the polymer to my lovely new Boxcar base. Then it's into the Pilot for printing! I sent in my old rollers with cores and one set of trucks each (both Pilot and 8 x 12) to Roll Crafters to have new rubber rollers made, which should take about a week. Now all I've got left to do before printing is buy some of the Akua water based inks to try out!

My First Project

I've been working on the designs for a new collection of letterpressed items called "Dead Things" for my shop, Tweedle Press. The sets will hopefully include gift tags, coasters, stationery, and file folders:

I'll be printing several of the items on chipboard, because I love the way it feels and looks. Here are the 2" x 2" gift tags:

My ultimate goal would be to print to stationery on some of my hand made recycled paper:

But I'll have to see how much of that I can actually produce. The junk mail is piling up, but each sheet just takes so long to make! Here are the stationery designs:

First, though, I need to see about getting new rollers for my presses and some ink. I may just go ahead and buy the starter pack from Boxcar Press since I'll need a base anyway for my polymer plates, but I do want to do a little looking into other types of ink first. If I end up choosing a different kind of ink, I may need a different kind of roller. So much to do!