We missed you internets!

Well Hello Hello!!

It may have come to your attention that we have been on a hiatus for quite some time. You may have thought we disappeared, or maybe something bad had happened, or even worse - that we forgot about you, our dear internet friends!

Don't fret friends - we haven't forgot about you. How could we you devilishly wonderful peeps! We have simply been in a state of constant transition over the last year. You may have read our previous post that we were moving to Ontario way back in October 2014. Well that happened and we found ourselves in the beautiful city of Pickering. Though Pickering was wonderful for us with its beautiful fall foliage, sandy beaches, and plethora of  Starbucks in close proximity, our slew of letterpress equipment just wasn't 'feeling it' (ie. we just didn't have a space to operate our equipment). So, in February of 2015, we made the move to Mississauga, Ontario, where we have found a wee studio space in which we finally moved all our letterpress equipment in to.  With all that moving it has taken us nearly 8 months to get settled, unpack all our pressessories (letterpress accessories), set up our new space, and get back to business. In fact, we are still in the process of getting our main C&P up and running due to some damaged incurred during transit. But we are happy to say, that at least for now we can begin to concentrate or returning to business as usual - even if the transition may continue to be slow.

So it's great to see you once again internets! We missed you a whole bunch and can't wait to post some great new things in the upcoming weeks and months as we get back up to speed.

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!

A Change of Scenery

You may have noticed we have been in a hiatus over the last couple months, with few tweets and blog posts. The reason? We have moved once again. This time, however, to another province all together!

We have packed up the presses, equipment, cats and our printer's devil and made our way to Ontario. Our studio is not up an running quite yet, but we hope to be back up to speed shortly. In the meantime though, you can still find our cards and goods at The Better Good, Void Gallery, and Hidden Stitch in Saskatoon. We will also have stuff posted in our shop in the upcoming months, so please check there as well.

It's with a heavy heart that we depart Saskatoon. It was our home for almost a decade and the place of so many memories. Know this, Saskatoon, you will always have a significant place in our lives and our hearts! We can only hope Ontario will be as good to us as Saskatchewan.

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