Calendar Sneak Peek

Here's a preview of a couple of the pages of the 2015 Letterpress calendar! The calendar will officially go on sale at Pyramid's Book Arts Fair on November 14-16!

See photos of our previous calendars at here.

Photos by Sara Shaffer

2012 Calendar Sneak Peek #2!

Another look at the 2012 calendar pages that are coming off the press! (See the first Sneak Peek here!)

Morgan wins the prize for being the first one with all her pages completed:

The clouds turned out beautifully!

Here's a shot of the front and back cover (by Kathryn Hoeppel and Sarah Hanks, respectively) after the first run.

These two smart ladies teamed up to print their pages together so they could use the same colors (and cut their clean up duties in half)!

2012 Calendar Sneak Peek #1!

Calendar pages are starting to appear in the studio! Here are some photos...

Laura and Molly were in the studio this week printing the first run of their awesome February design (I taught them my two-person printing method!):

While I was there, I could see Leslie'd started her October page by printing her lino block that she'd cut:

Also saw Morgan's beautiful May sunrays on the drying rack:

Lastly, a peek at Alyson's test prints for her January page:

Check out her blog post about her trial run here.

This is my favorite phase of the calendar project.... Going to the studio and seeing that new pages have appeared! Stay tuned for Sneak Peek #2!

Birthday Card Fundraiser Preview #4

All the cards have been printed and assembled into sets!

The sets will be available this Saturday at Pyramid's 30th birthday party. If you can't make it out, stay tuned for info on how to purchase them online next week!

And now, photos of the rest of the cards!

From Carina Herman:

Leslie Smith:

Sara Shaffer:

Beth Schaible:

 Jody McLean:

Amelia Smith:

Morgan Ward:

Sarah Hanks:

Hope to see you Saturday!

Members Only Workshop

On January 28, we held our first Members Only letterpress workshop! This workshop was a part of a series of monthly workshops that are free to a limited number of Pyramid Atlantic members (registration is on a first-come, first-served basis). For our workshop, Leslie had the idea to have people scratch designs into negatives to create their own homemade polymer plate for printing on the Vandercooks.

Unfortunately, I was a little busy during the first half of the workshop and forgot to take pictures. Here are the few action shots that I did get!

I love Leslie's expression in this photo as she's making rounds checking on people scrubbing their exposed polymers:

And here are some photos of the prints that were made. We inked up the presses with Pantone Warm Red and Process Blue and had a variety of papers available to choose from.

A lovely heart design made by Melissa Livingston, printed on handmade paper:

Dawn Hershberger's design, printed on wheat-colored Canson Edition:

A really interesting design, also printed on wheat Canson Edition. I didn't catch the name of the artist:

Clare Winslow's space-inspired print, on handmade paper:

Gary Arlen's print on champagne Canford card:

Bonnie Lee Holland's print on French Muscletone Kraft paper next to her scratched negative:

A photo showing the three stages of Juraj Mihalik's design:

Marj Hollis's turtle. Originally, two of the flippers didn't show up because the lines were scratched too thinly on the negative. Luckily, Marj had time to go back and scratch a little more into the negative and make a second plate:

Morgan Ward's self-portrait on Stonehenge:

Here's the same plate printed on bright red Canford cardstock (though the photo doesn't really do it justice!)

Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough to get everyone's prints before they left. But overall, I think everyone had a great time and came away with some pretty amazing prints!

More workshops:

• To be attend these free monthly workshops, you must be a Pyramid Atlantic member. Sign up here! The next Members Only workshop will be on Friday, February 25 (topic TBA).

• Check out the schedule of our other letterpress workshops here!

Maintenance Day photos!

Huge thanks to all the volunteers that braved the 20 degree weather and came out to our maintenance day:

Beth Schaible, Steve Cole, Aly Hurt, Beck Levy, Bob Cmarik, Jamillah Abdullah, Angelica Temoche, Bea Jackson, Robin Childers, Elizabeth Levenson, Marty Ittner, Daniel Zadorozhnny and Morgan Ward. 

Apologies for the poor photo quality... I forgot my camera and was stuck taking pictures with my phone!

Here's Aly and Elizabeth working at cleaning the bed and bearings of the Universal 1:

Look at the gunk they scraped off:

Here's Steve and Beck cleaning the 4T's lockbar's disassembled parts:

Nice and shiny! Wish I'd taken a "before" shot...

Former Letterpress Associate Beth Schaible working with Bob and Jamillah on the 4T:

Screenprinting Associate Marty Ittner swept and mopped the floor between and behind the presses:

Thanks, Marty!!

It's hard to believe that with all the hours and elbow grease we put in today, the presses could still use a lot more! We hope to have another maintenance day in six months or so to really get these guys in tip-top shape. Melanie, Leslie and I hope to see you at the next one!

In the studio...

One of our letterpress regulars, Morgan Ward, has been in the studio a lot lately as a part of The Artclash Collective's Fun-a-day program. The idea is to make a piece of art or do some other type of project each day in January and then display the results in February. Morgan will be submitting hers to be displayed in Philadelphia. More info on the program can be found here: www.artclash.com.

And now for some photos! Here's what she currently has up at the bulletin board at Pyramid:

Morgan was particularly excited about this piece, which features Pyramid's largest typeface with our smallest:

And here was yesterday's work of the day, printed on tracing paper:

I can't wait to see all 31 pieces!