In the studio...

Molly's been trying her hand at making some greeting cards. Here are some photos of her first two:

Love them both! See her blog post about the cards and her etsy shop for more info!

Letterpress Calendar process

Photo by Miranda Anderson

Just thought I'd share some links to posts that some of our 2012 Calendar printers wrote on their experiences designing and printing their pages!

June printer, Miranda Anderson, shows step-by-step photos of her printing process.

Molly Moran, half of the February duo, posts on her blog about her and Laura McLean's page.

Alyson Hurt (January) walks readers through her process.

For photos and purchase information, see our 2012 Letterpress Calendar page.

2012 Calendar Assembly Party!

Last week, a group of calendar printers got together to assemble the final product! Some photos:

All the finished pages, lined up in order:

Three of our official hole-punchers (Erin, Leslie, Kathryn):

Our two official collate-ers (Laura and Lauren):

A group shot of everyone hard at work:

The final product, a set of 118 beautiful calendars:

We should have information on how to purchase the calendars very soon!

Pyramid Letterpress at Crafty Bastards!

Just thought I'd share some photos from the Pyramid Atlantic booth at Crafty Bastards earlier this month. We had a letterpress demo going on the little Vandercook 0 proofing press. Volunteers Sarah Hanks, Lauren Emeritz, Molly Moran and Erin Brophy helped fairgoers print on the little guy.

Here's a photo of Molly and Erin doing just that:

Photo by Rachel Carrier

And here's a photo taken by Molly of a completed print:

Photo by Molly Moran

Check out Molly's blog post about Crafty Bastards here!

2012 Calendar Sneak Peek #4!

The finished pages are really starting to pile up! I counted 9 piles of finished pages when I was at Pyramid last night. Here's a trio of newly completed pages by Lauren Emeritz (April), Laura McLean and Molly Moran ("Februarius") and Leslie (October):

See Molly's post about printing the February page on her blog.

And a trio of half-way finished pages by Erin Brophy (left), Sara Shaffer and Bridget Stoyko (middle) and Tess Sammarco (right):

We are just a few days away from the print deadline so the calendars should be up and ready to sell soon!

See all the Sneak Peeks here!

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!

Happy Hour 8.22.11

Photos from Monday night's Happy Hour!

Chase Clement, who took one of my workshops back in March, stopped by to check out the studio. He brought a copy of his book that he'd printed on an SP-20 with all handset type at Smith College back in 1972. Here are some photos. Amazing...

Alyson Hurt came to play around with some type to get ideas for the January page of the 2012 Letterpress Calendar:

Kathryn Hoeppel set some type to print onto watercolored cards:

She didn't really get to printing but I'm sure they'll look great when she's done.

Erin Brophy played around with making a pattern of ornaments. Maybe inspired by Chase's book?

Molly Moran printed the type she'd set at the last Happy Hour:

Curious to see what she ends up doing with these? Folded cards?

Lauren Emeritz also set some type for a birthday card (also serving as a prototype for her April page of the 2012 calendar):

I love how everything is all planned out on the graph paper.

Alison Whitty also came by to play around with some type for the July page of the calendar and to share some design ideas (sadly, I didn't get photos of these!)

The next Happy Hour will also be a critique of everyone's preliminary calendar page designs. Can't wait to see everyone's ideas!

Happy Hour 08.08.11 (Featuring Handmade Photopolymer)

Fun Happy Hour last night! Erica came to print a linocut she'd carved:

Meanwhile, everyone else decided to experiment with making their own photopolymer plates. Here's everyone scratching away at their negatives:

Molly's project:

Erin hand-inking her plate (everyone inked by hand to save on clean up time):

Her negative and the print:

Laura planning out what she wanted to do for her design:

A cute heart in a speech bubble (in dusty pink):

Loved Erika's trees:

Great job everyone! See you in two weeks!

Letterpress Happy Hour - July 25th, 2011

After the last busy, busy happy hour with all the presses pressing, we had a much quieter happy hour last night. Kendra, Miranda, and Molly were all there to set type.
Miranda was there with Baby Eliot setting type for his birth announcement. Being the smarty pants that she is, she had already printed most of the announcement design before Eliot arrived. Now she's just working to fill in all his birth date details. He was a welcome addition to the happy hour crew!
Molly was a student in a recent Using Photopolymer on the Letterpress workshop so she got a crash course in typesetting last night. She was a natural!
Kendra was hard at work setting type to print a short poem. Kendra is a new member at Pyramid and she's been taking screenprinting lessons with Becca. We were happy to steal her for an evening in the letterpress studio.

All these photos were taken with the Hipstamatic app for iPhone during our Hipstamatic vs. Instagram discussion. We like mixing new technology with our old school hobbies at letterpress happy hour!