Dear Brides-to-be,

If you are in the Los Angeles area, we'd love to have you come by our booth, #3007, at the Unique LA show to talk invites. We will have our wedding book and samples available to view and to fondle. After all this is letterpress :)

Shop Update

Whew! We have been sooo busy designing and printing that I forgot to post that the new holiday designs are finally finished. They are available in our etsy shop along with some of the old goodies like Mr. Roboto and the Love Invader cards. Hope you had a lovely thanksgiving!

p.s. this one's our fave!

A Unique Email

I'm so thrilled that our Joy card was chosen as one of the designs featured on the Unique LA e-mailer for the show. It's such a fun show with so many awesome vendors. We can't wait!

aka: anemone_press

In an effort to bring my social awkwardness to a whole new level, I am now on twitter. And this is from the person who is like, my-what? face-who? Aren't I current? Ha!

Oh no!

I can't believe it, I completely SPACED on showing you guys this! On November 8th, the awesome Ken and Shino of Fugu Fugu Press had their open house and we were invited. I so love to go to other creative spaces and see how they look, don't you? I think I have major studio envy. It's such an awesome space in a great location! And I'm so glad that we finally got to meet Ken; he and Mr. Anemone share a couple of musician friends, including the tuba master below, Mike Bulger.

fugu fugu press' black ball heidelberg with their C & P in the background.

ken & shino are so nice, they even joie studio keep one of their presses there!

ken on piano and mike on tuba making merry.

Holiday Sneak Peek!

A few new goodies available soon:

Unique Street Poster Holiday 2009 Show

Unique Street Poster Holiday 2009 Show
Originally uploaded by uniquelosangeles

Yay! We're thrilled to be a part of Unique LA again! We'll have new paper goods for holiday and every day and our Love Invader card will (finally!) be making a reappearance. Can't wait!

Happy Halloween!!

Boo!

The Importance of Ink

Ink, while not particularly expensive per can, can add up fast. Accruing a full compliment of Pantone mixers can run you into the hundreds and I think that this is why new printers are hesitant to try out different brands and types. This was definitely true in my situation and while I wanted to do something about it, I just didn't want to make more investments into something that might not/would not work. For a long time I was sticking with the devil I knew.

Slowly but surely, though, I bought some left over ink via eBay and was given some freebies by other printers. And it was a freebie that saved the Sara Morris job for me. Take a look at the photo below. The page on the right was printed with VanSon silver; the one on the left, Speed Master 9000 series silver. I had started the job with my tried and true VanSon (the particular brand of rut that I was mired in), and when printing on white paper, the VanSon worked like a charm. On dark stock it was another situation completely and there was hardly any metal flake. AT ALL. I even tried double printing it to no avail. Then I freaked out! All my set up was done! What was I going to do?! I couldn't print a job like this, with this horrible quality!! A completely wasted day! Until... I remembered that I had a freebie ink in Silver. And, well, you can see for yourself the difference. Like night and day. So. I guess the moral of this little letterpress tale is to experiment a little. You never know when it will save your job and save you from mediocrity.

left - single hit Speed Master 9000 series ::: right - double hit of VanSon Silver

Sara Morris

A while back I was dropping off at a job at Identity Kitchen's fab studio and I glanced at a new identity Ellen was working on for photographer, Sara Morris. I noticed that some of the designs had a very faint stripe pattern in the background and since we had recently discussed using dark paper, Neenah Classic Columns in Charcoal instantly popped into my head! Here was a way to utilize dark stock and have a subtle stripe. The end result was gorgeous!

note: there was a slight error in the plate.
all the good ones went to the client, of course!

The Deets:

Design ::: Identity Kitchen
Paper ::: Neenah Classic Columns - Charcoal - 80# duplexed (for 160 pounds of goodness!)
Ink ::: Speed Master - 9000 Series - Silver (More on this yummy ink later...)

Getting Down to Business

I thought I'd share some delightful business cards we recently finished (details are below):




All three were designed by Karen Hoey of Hoey Design
110# Crane's Lettra in Pearl White
2 Spot colors each design

I just love the subtlety and softness!!