Pens for Lettra

Today we had a great question come to us via twitter from Kelani Irene (@KIFN) about which pens are best for writing on Crane Lettra. At Backyard we are frequent users of ball point pens and have typically used them - like thousands, if not millions of others - to write on our letterpressed card with no real issue (other than them dying on us mid-word). So,to try and help Kelani out, we gathered up a small sample of pens with different tips and nibs to showcase potential differences of their inky impressions on lettra cotton rag.

Here are the writing candidates (right to left in photo):
1) Straedtler Norica 132 46 HB2 pencil - freshly sharpened.
2) Bic Ultra Round Stic Grip - our daily user
3) Uni Jetstream - our secondary daily user
4) Straedtler Pigment Liner 0.3
5) Sharpie twin tip - fine tip used here
6) Prismacolour 005
7) Bic Velocity 
8) Pentel Brush pen

Sorry no fountain pen on hand - but maybe we'll update this list to include it in the future.
And here are the results:

As you can see most of the pens we had on hand wrote very well on the smooth cotton surface of the lettra. The Straedtler Pigment Liner 0.3 (4th line "a test of pens"), Sharpie twin tip (6th line "on lettra"), and Pentel Brush pen (last line "what fun!") appeared to have more 'bleeding' into the paper, but nothing to make the writing incomprehensible. The lettra seems to absorb these felt tip, more ink saturated pen types.

Our personal choice is the old fashion trusted ball point, like the Bic Ultra Round Stic Grip and Uni Jetstream, or the Straedtler Pigment Liner for a deeper black . However, saying that, we have by no means presented an exhaustive list of pens. If you have any suggestions of pens (or other writing implements for that matter) to try out we are happy oblige. So send us an email with your pen suggestions. Ultimately though it's not what you use to write with, rather the sentiments written that will hit the mark.

Hope we guided you a little Kelani in choosing a pen for your lettra letterpress paper needs.
Happy letterpressing!!

Glow in the Coasters

With all the excitement of using glow in the dark inks, we recently produced some glow in the dark paper coasters too. These ones are inspired by some classic glasswares we had around the house that we used for storing homemade jams. Each set contains 6 hand drawn images containing classic Kerr, Ball, Dominion, Ideal, Bernadine and Crown glass jars. We hand silk screened each one using gold and custom mixed glow in the dark inks.

Glow in the dark cards

It's a been a few months since we've shared a post about some of our recent work. We added some sneak peaks and images to our twitter account when we made these new items, but sometimes is not the most adequate forum to showcase the designs and process. 

Posted below are some of our new cards and designs. Though we often look to designs for letterpress printing, we sometimes forget to acknowledge that screen printing doesn't stray far from ours hearts. And, if you are familiar with both screen printing and letterpress design, you can recognize some similarities in process despite using vastly difference equipment and producing very different aesthetics. 

For some of our recent cards, we decided to hand silk screen them in limited numbers. The reason for this was that we got a hold of some glow in the dark paints, something you just can't seem to find for letterpress, and, you know, we just had to try them. So, our design and colour wizard, Shauna, had the awesome idea of using the glow inks as the base and mixing in some other colours. That way you get the hit of colour while maintaining that kid inspired happiness of still glowing in the dark!! 

This entire card is glow in the dark!
Making sure your thanks are also visible in the dark

Simple two colour screen print. The electric eels glow
in the dark. How shocking!

Fritzler-Krueger Wedding

We recently completed our most extensive wedding package ever! This included save the dates, invites, maps, reply cards, reception cards, and even letterpressed envelopes. Wow!!

These invites were for the lovely and effervescent young couple Megan Fritzler and Dustin Krueger. These beautiful people came into our studio with a an inspired visions, an unrelenting enthusiasm for letterpress, and a yellow floral chair (more on this in a minute). Although they knew what they wanted in their invitation suite and the vibe they wanted to convey, they came to us to design all the elements to capture their vision, all inspired by a vintage floral chair. I wish we still had a photo of the chair - recent computer issues has resulted in that photo being lost forever - but it is similar to this one (but in bright shades of yellow and gold).

We hand sketched a pattern from this vintage chair and used it as the centrepiece for all the elements. Also, because Megan and Dustin were so awesome in giving us the liberty to try new things, we decided to make this a four colour - that's right four colour - design. If this wasn't complicated enough already though, we hand mixed all one of a kind colours. These invites may have been labour intensive, but we believe they came out beautiful!!  Have a look and tell us what you think. Big congrats go out to Megan and Dustin! You two are amazing and we truly appreciate letting us be part of your wedding extravaganza. Wishing you both a lifetime of love, laughter and happiness.

The Final Product

The design and polymer plates all ready to hit the press

Laying down the first two custom colours for the
 reception and map portions of the invitations

Laying down the first two custom colours for the invites, reply cards
and accommodations cards

Using our Pantone colour swatches to get just the right colours

Adding in the third custom colour layer

The fourth custom colour layer for the reception and map
portions of the invites

Here you can see the before and after the fourth colour was added

Fourth colour added to the reception cards

The completed invitation card

The completed reply cards and reception invitations