move it along

Almost two months since my last post, shame on me!

I have started letterpress printing and with that please continue onto

http://metaldoily.blogspot.com/

My new blog!

for fun

1. Monique!, 2. salmon sushi, 3. Sonora High School, La Habra, 4. Teal Floral - MERCI, 5. Jake Gyllenhaal, 6. Old Fashioned, 7. Paris, l'amour..., 8. Creme Brulee..., 9. English National Ballet - Swan Lake, 10. Be Happy Always, 11. What's your sign?, 12. The Mods Paper Dolls

here's the deal... you answer the following 12 questions about yourself (my answers are in parentheses after each question):

1. What is your first name? (monique)

2. What is your favorite food? (sushi)

3. What high school did you attend? (sonora)

4. What is your favorite color? (teal)

5. Who is your celebrity crush? (jake gyllenhaal)

6. Favorite drink? (old fashioned)

7. Dream vacation? (paris)

8. Favorite dessert? (crème brûlée )

9. What do you want to be when you grow up? (ballerina)

10. What do you love most in life? (being happy)

11. One word to describe you? (gemini)

12. Your Flickr name? (jetaimemods)

Wanna play?: Type your answer to each of the above questions into Flickr's search. Using only the images that appear on the first page, choose your favorite and copy and paste each of the URL’s into the Mosaic Maker (3 columns, 4 rows)... Enjoy!

Metal Doily Press

Hi friends,

Now presenting my press name: Metal Doily Press! Above is the logo I'll be using on my cards etc., and eventually on a website. It's been a little while since I last posted but I'm excited about what I've been working on to print. I feel so relieved to have finally decided on something. The funny part is I came up with it over a year ago and didn't think I would actually use it. When we moved into our apartment in LA we noticed for some reason there is a metal looking doily around the lock on our front door and I said that will be my letterpress name when I start my business! Here we are and I decided to use it. I'm most likely moving all letterpress related entries to a new blog... I may move all entries and make all future entries from that blog as well but I'll keep you posted.

It's here!

After the stress of me taking a day off for the press to delivered and then being told it wouldn't be delivered until the next day... it finally made it! Luckily my dad is awesome and was home the next day and helped the guy set it in place in their garage.

Jenny gave me ink and furniture (the wood pieces used to lock in your type, see below. photo by hyperbolation via flickr) to get started.


I'm getting some art ready to send out and have a polymer plate made from Boxcar Press. The polymer plate allows me to design and typeset in Illustrator. Here is an example of one from one-story.com.



Once I get going with this I'm going to invest in some metal type from M&H Type in San Francisco so I can reuse the designs via polymer plates but then hand set the type for each individual project.

Next on my to-do list is naming my letterpress "business", I'm having a really hard time with this! We'll see what I decide...

Wood Racquet Tennis Classic

One of the best experiences while interning at Baumvision was helping set up their annual Wood Racquet Tennis Classic Tournament. The proceeds from this all day event are donated to The Hoag Cancer Center in Newport Beach. This event starts early at 8am and goes until dusk, so RSVP to enjoy a great day of dressing up in your favorite vintage tennis gear and watching the tournament while raising money for cancer research.

Yay!

The press was delivered today!!
Lucky my dad has a weird work schedule and today was his day off so he was able to be there and let the guy in. This of course left me being a nervous wreck today because I wanted to be there to make sure it was set facing the right way, with enough room for me to get behind it and most of all that it wasn't damaged.

I'm going to visit this Saturday for my dad's birthday dinner so I'll take pictures then of the press in it's new home!

tomorrow!

edit: It didn't go smoothly and now it's not being picked up/delivered until tomorrow...maybe.
Sigh, I took a day off for nothing. A huge thank you to my parents and sister doing a lot to get the space ready for me. I owe them a nice dessert night the next time they come visit me in LA.

The move for the press is happening a lot faster than I had anticipated. It's being picked up and delivered tomorrow! I'm heading over to my parents tonight to clear the area it needs to go in and to be there already for the morning/afternoon delivery. Ah! I'm excited and nervous that it all goes smoothly.

I did get to go print on it this past Saturday. I practiced with an old polymer plate Jenny had and printed on both really nice cotton stock and stardream stock. I didn't save any of those because they really were just practice prints, I noticed though I would feel more comfortable working on a step stool..so there's one thing to keep an eye out for. I haven't even had a chance to photograph the goodies I brought home (free ink, furniture etc.) guess I'll do it all tomorrow along with moving in the press at my parents!

In other news, Karl & I saw radiohead last night and I'm still in dreamy-swoon land from the set. It was my 4th time seeing them but wow are they still really fantastic...

ok more tomorrow!

hmmm...

I wish blogger had the option like livejournal does to reply to individual comments!
Do you all check off the "send me follow up comments" option when you leave a comment? just curious.

Either way, thank you all so much for all the congrats about the new press. Hopefully I'll get to print something for you seeing that as of right now the only people that read this regularly are friends.

My goal for now is to start small and really get used to the process of printing. I've read all too often about someone starting etsy shops etc., with printing and then running into a problem with a press and then having to worry about filling orders. I don't want to put myself through that kind of stress (right away haha)

Thanks for reading friends!

misprinted type

Eduardo Recife of misprinted type has updated his site! This is great news as I think his typefaces and collages are fantastic. The updates include 6 new fonts available for purchase, 1 free font you can download, 2 new photoshop brushes, 1 eps vector pack & a ton of new collage work you can check out. The image above is an example of how he uses one of his new fonts called Le King.

Chandler & Price 10x15

I've been holding out with this news because I wanted to finalize some details... I bought a large floor model letterpress printing press! Yes...before I even got my Craftsmen Imperial tabletop press up and running that I posted about here. I'll tell you what, this was just a really great opportunity that I couldn't pass up.

On a Monday morning a few weeks ago I saw an ad over on BriarPress for an 8x12 Chandler & Price in Hermosa Beach in excellent condition and for a great price that had been posted the day before. I called anyway regardless of thinking that for sure it would be spoken for already. Actually I called my parents first to ask if they would be ok with me having it at there house (they were!) The 8x12 press was taken already BUT the seller, an amazing lady named Jenny, had another one. A bigger one that she was willing to sell for the same price as the 8x12! I pretty much was set on buying it but wanted to go see it in action first.

I went to check out the press after letterpress class so Brenda & Danni were able to come with me to the warehouse. Turns out Jenny is the letterpress printer for all letterpress things at Papyrus! I had just gotten this beautiful letterpress card for a friends wedding so it was so exciting to see thousands of prints of it. She was nice enough to show us the working of her studio, samples, mock ups etc. and believe you me all three of us geeked out when she asked "Do you guys want to see the glitter room??" The room where they hand glitter any glittered elements on the cards, so cool! The deal was finalized for the press to be picked up before Oct. 1 and to only add to Jenny's coolness she offered to let me come by and do some printing on the press with her supervision to get a feel for it and also answer any questions that may come up. I will be heading over there to do that this Saturday.

I'm so excited for this you have no idea. I've already been researching which fonts I want to get from M&H type foundry. I will take some pictures this weekend but here are some (thanks danni) from when we went to see if the first time around.

please excuse the sleepy eyes/no makeup! you can see how big the press is in this one...

last day of letterpress class

Sadly our four week class finished this past Saturday. I'm really glad I got to print on the other press this time so I could see the difference in setups, feeding the press and all that. I'm somewhat short on time to blog so I'll just post the photos!

Setting up the type on the vandercook to be locked up

another angle of me setting up the type with my teacher watching from the side
feeding the paper to print on the vandercook

My Thank You cards!

Danni took a nice closeup of a card so you can see how the impression looks. Like I mentioned before we couldn't do deep impressions in the class but this is what's called a kiss impression.

danni, me & brenda in front of the Chandler & Price press
yay letterpress!

printing day!

Week Three: Time to print! Since it can take 30 min to clean off ink from the press we needed to coordinate as a class which color would start on the Chandler & Price and which would go on the Vandercook (flat bed cylinder press.) So we decided on brown for the C&P printers and red for the Vandercook. I was first up on the C&P, I was so nervous!! I had to practice my timing of feeding new notecards and taking them out (a.k.a. the part where you can smash your fingers.) I did two dry runs with the press not meeting to make an impression and then on the third I started printing. Here is the final result!
We do "kiss impressions" in class which means there is a very slight impression into the paper but it is not visible on the other side. This is meant to save the metal type from being worn down or ruined as much as possible. I set up type for Thank You fold over cards which I will print first thing this week, our last class already :(

second class

Class this week was hands on! I mentioned before that I wanted to print personalized stationery cards & envelopes for myself, so that was my first plan of attack on typesetting. Our class is 2.5 hours and it took me about 2 hours to set it up! Attention to detail is crucial and trying to find what you need amongst thousands of tiny metal bits can be overwhelming. I'm really happy with the way the set up came out (we print this coming weekend...)
Here are some photos!

Some of the work area and metal spacing

Dingbats!
Me setting my type in the composing stick

Danni picking out some letters

Brenda looking very into her work!

My type all set!
(click on the photo to get a better view)
This will go at the top of cement grey flat notecards from paper source

This week: Printing!

First letterpress class!

I had my first class this past Saturday! Not a whole lot to report just yet but I thought I would post anyway. Brenda met up with me at the bus near my place and we took that and two trains over to Pasadena, Danni joined us at the school.
This class was pretty much an over view of the course and letterpress in general. We asked any questions we had and learned about our teachers background. She has 12 years of letterpress printing experience! Needless to say this is something that takes a long time to master. We got to look through all the cases of type and figure out what out first project would be. Next was watching her do a printing demo. There is a lot of safety rules to keep in mind when doing this, if you get a chance to watch the youtube video I put here you can see the press opening and closing...it does so with 1,200 lbs of pressure(!) so watching our fingers and keeping a steady rhythm when changing out the paper is a must.



After class I walked over to Paper Source and got some flat notecards and some envelopes to print some personalized stationery. There are 8 people in the class so depending on if my design isn't too complex I may print in this weeks class. I'm really excited to see how it all goes!

Little Surprises

While getting ready to start the work day, our receptionist came over and handed me a package from Strand Books in New York. I wasn't expecting anything so I text messaged Karl that a book he had ordered came and he wrote back that it was a surprise for me! yay! I love love love toile de jouy fabric and michael ian black so this was a great start of my day :) karl rocks!

friday survey!

Lovely survey from danni hong :)

1. What did you do 10 years ago?
I was 15, yikes! So that puts me at sophomore year in high school and I think just learning my way around the interwebs.

2. Five items on your to-do list:

• Have a blast at Heidi's wedding tomorrow!
• Reupholster the seats of two chairs I just got for free
  
• Organize my designs/thoughts for letterpress design stuff
  
• Relax!
  
• Design new business cards! (I need to do this too, so I'll steal that one from danni)
  

3. Snacks I enjoy:
chips!

4. What would you do if you were a billionaire?
First I would write a big fat check to pay off my student loans!!!! Pay off my parents mortgage second. Travel. Buy a rad house where I could live off the land and then buy one of these:

5. Places I would live:

• Vermont
  
• London
  
• Scotland
  

6. Jobs I have had:

• Very first job was at The Body Shop (Brea Mall, and I'm still addicted to all their stuff)
  
• Server & Manager at Ho Sum Bistro on the Balboa Peninsula
• Intern at Baumvision (rad rad rad experience!)
  
• Graphic Designer at GMPC!
  

7. Bloggers I am tagging who you will enjoy getting to know better:
Brenda, Shannon & Stephanie

time flies...

I can't believe it's been a month since my last post!
It seems like a lot has gone on and at the same time like not much has.
Karl and I both had birthdays pass, which were spent with grilled cheese and sushi (the latter was my birthday pick of course.) I had a great night out with my family for my birthday in orange county, we went to a teppanyaki restaurant! Karl took me to my favorite vegan place on my actual birthday and then we stuffed ourselves with flourless chocolate cake when we got home.

We made a trip out to Hemet to visit with his great-grandma Adeline, better know as Ad. His grandma, Fran, flew in from Tennessee and his Dad, Step-Mom and Uncle drove down from the bay area. It was great spending time with everyone! We had done this two years ago but this was my first time meeting Karl's uncle Kevin. Here is the fam!
l-r: Sandi (step-mom), Neil (dad), Fran (grandma), Ad (great-grandma), Karl, Kevin (uncle)


A few weeks later Karl's Mom came down from the Bay Area to visit and bring down some bookshelves and a book case, so we have some work to do on putting those up. It was my first time meeting her as well! It was a quick trip but we showed her around some places we like to go to. That Sunday was Father's Day so I headed down to my grandma's in Brea and saw all my family and ate some delicious food!

This past weekend we took Friday off and drove up to Fremont (where he is from) to stay with his Dad and Step-Mom where I would be meeting his grandpa. I've now officially met all of his immediate family. The whole family is a crack up so there was lots of laughing and fun pictures! It was really nice to get away for a little bit. It was great not having to sleep through sirens and lights blaring through the windows from billboards nearby :)

One of our stops in Fremont was this thrift store he really likes called Thrift Town. There was this really neat Milk glass candy dish and I realized I've always really liked the way that stuff looks. I didn't have my wallet with me but Karl's parents surprised me and went back and got it for me when they got dinner. His step-mom also had an old vase/pitcher made out of it so she was nice enough to give me that as well! When I googled Milk glass today the wikipedia entry came up and they had this picture of some displayed and I fell in love with how they presented it. I think I would use teal instead of blue though...


Letterpress class starts next week! I just found out that I will be taking it with not one friend from college but two! It will be great to not only catch up with Brenda and Danni but to be taking an art class with them because they are both extremely talented.

Oh! I've stop driving to work! I'm bus only now to work and try to take it other places as much as possible. It's been fantastic to just zone out to music, read etc. and not worry about traffic. I live 8 miles from work which with LA traffic meant a 40 minutes commute in the morning and about an hour coming home! It hasn't really changed much with bussing either and I don't really notice much because I'm not doing the driving. My monthly metro pass will also let me take the train all the way to Pasadena for the class so that's going to be awesome.

Phew ok, all caught up!

The press is here!

My press arrived yesterday! Luckily my work is awesome and let me use their shipping account with UPS. I only had to pay $30 to ship my 108lbs press all the way from Florida! I couldn’t wait for Karl to get home to help me get it out of my car and up the stairs. He was super boyfriend and got out the press from the box & crate it was in in no time AND even took pictures for me (because I’m no good with his camera.) It’s been in storage for the past 35 years!

This weekend I’m attacking it with vinegar, lemon juice & a scotch brite sponge to get rid of the rust. It all looks to be surface rust so it should be fairly easy to get off. Enjoy the photos! (excuse the messy apartment background)




This type was already set up in the center, so I have my first few pieces of metal type!

one year at GMPC

Tons of Barbie projects later... today marks my one year anniversary at my job!
I've photographed a lot of the stuff I've done that we've either produced or gotten production samples of and they are going to be put up my website sometime!

Craftsmen Letterpress

Exciting news... I got a letterpress!

I got it off of Briar Press, which is an enthusiast's #1 stop for buying, selling & learning all things letterpress. Every day I would sift through the classifieds section, Karl would even help me out looking on ebay, and finally I took a shot in the dark and responded to this ad:

Craftsmen Table Top Platen Letterpress - My father gave me this Letterpress over 45 Years ago. It’s been in Storage off and on for the last 35 Years. It is similar to the Chandler & Price Pilot Letterpress. I have included a Picture for your review

I'd pretty much written this off because a) it had been posted 5 days before I saw it (similar to seeing something for Free on craigslist and responding 5 days later...) and b) the guy selling it lives in Florida. I wrote a quick note asking if this press was still available and would shipping to Los Angeles be an option. A few days later I got: yes & YES. We spoke on the phone the other day to iron out the details of shipping and payment. He was so nice and told me that if once I get it I needed any help to call him and ask anything I might need to know. He ran a printing business himself and was more than happy to give me some great business advice like P.O.D (pay on delivery!) which I learned all about in my freelance business class :)

I'm so excited about finding one! I have to be honest I was starting to feel like I would NEVER get one. Being a fan of and reading some of the blogs I have in my links section, Adventures in Letterpress, Joie Studio and Cake & Pie it seemed like they all got their first presses almost two years so my lack of responses and the prices I was seeing on ebay were really discouraging. They stopped being produced in the '80s with the invention of desktop publishing taking over. Most of the ones being used though (at Paper Source for example) are anywhere from 30-100 years old!

My press is a Craftsmen 5x8 which means the maximum printing area is little less than 5x8. According to The Introduction to Letterpress article mine is known as a High-end Lever Press/Tabletop Platen. It's the perfect size to be in my apartment! Some of the larger printing models weigh into the tons!

Here are the photos that were in the Ad (in the top one you can even see some type set in the middle waiting to be printed!) I'll take more when I actually get it! YAY!





Happy weekend everyone! Karl and I are seeing The Kids in the Hall perform in downtown tonight!

God bless you, Mr. Torgan

If I'm not checking out movies from Memorial Library then I'm here at The New Beverly theater.
It's about 1.5 miles from our place but I would drive from just about any place to see something here. This revival theater is celebrating its 30th anniversary today! It's a steal at $7/double feature, but Karl and I go here so often we get a pass that makes the movies $4.50/double feature, so cheap! We've seen some really great double bills here, from Metropolis & Dark City (my first time there!) to The Monkee's movies Head & Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The New Beverly is really special to us. This is a little blurb from their calendar this month...

This May 5th will mark the start of the New Beverly Cinema's 30th year in business! To celebrate this occasion, our May 2008 calendar will be a show-for-show replication of our May 1978 debut calendar. The only deviations from May 1978 will be the Grindhouse Film Festival shows, the midnight shows, and a substitute for LOGAN'S RUN on May 4-6 (no studio prints of that title exist at the moment). In keeping with the spirit of the 30th anniversary, all of these shows will be from 1978 or earlier.

RESERVOIR DOGS, one of the New Beverly's most successful midnight shows, and one of the longest running (every Saturday at midnight for most of the early to mid 90s), will also return to the New Beverly Fridays at midnight starting May 9!

The May 2008 is lovingly dedicated to my dad Sherman, who was the main driving force behind the New Beverly from its founding in '78 until his sudden and untimely passing this past July. The New Beverly would have never made it this far without him, and we'll never forget him.

- Michael Torgan


image above: The late Sherman Torgan

Hello Memorial

I used to love going to the La Habra library when I was little to either checkout The Boxcar Children Books (my favorite one being The Pizza Mystery because duh what kid didn't like pizza?) and Tiffany's debut cd because I would listen to I think we're alone now over and over again! My point being is that I love having an awesome library close to my apartment now where I can go get neat things for FREE. We've checked out a ton of movies and documentaries from there. Sometimes I just like taking the walk over when Karl is going to check out the sale they have every Saturday. Recently a movie crew took over and added on extensions of brickwork to the sides and made it look like a small prep school that will be in an Adam Sandler movie, it was so neat to see how fast they put it all up!

Below are some gorgeous pictures taken by Floyd B. Bariscale, he has a cool blog where he takes pictures of monuments and landmarks in and around Los Angeles called Big Orange Landmarks.

flickr finds

I found the following while browsing through flickr yesterday. Absolutely gorgeous stuff, I can't wait!

Letter Head

Since registering for class I've been researching letterpresses like crazy.
Pretty much every website you can find about the subject tells you to start with reading David S. Rose's Intro to Letterpress Printing. Briarpress.org is another site that's crucial to learning about it. The forums here are great. Hopefully stuff will make sense once I start the class. While it's a challenge to secure a press to buy, it seems like once you do there are a lot of people out there willing to help you find any parts, manuals or just troubleshoot so that's really reassuring.
Later I can post some of my favorite print pieces I found on flickr.

I'm (finally) getting around to working on a t-shirt design for the Nerds of Design blog. A blog my friends from school and I started to help us stay motivated and design for fun.

I shouldn't start posts as I'm leaving for the day...

Women's League

Last night was the Biz Ladies Meetup organized by Grace from Design*Sponge! My mind is still reeling from it. Walking into Design Within Reach was really overwhelming, there were so many ladies there who just looked fabulous. After grabbing a snack, I didn't want to feel like a loner so I introduced myself to the girl next to me and ta-da(!) she's rad! We sat down at the first group which had a speaker from Smith Barney to discuss financial planning and investing as women and as potential small business owners. So much information to process but really good to hear. She recommended this book to read On My Own Two Feet: A Modern Girl's Guide to Personal Finance

Second group was with Tanya Aguiniga, originally from Tijuana, Mexcio and a RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) grad with her MFA. It was really inspiring to hear her story and to see how driven she is is what's making everything work for her in the interesting niche of furniture design. What would YOU do if you got a $50,000 grant for your work??

The third session was with Grace. She broke down amazing PR/Marketing tips for someone who's just getting started. It's crazy how simple it actually is if you just focus on what your audience is. I think my biggest fear of what I want to do is that the market is just getting too saturated but I also think that keeping true to my vision is what will set me apart from others just following a fad.

The last group were really exciting to hear from because I love their website and wish I could buy everything from it! The ladies that started Reform School in Silverlake talked all about how they took their idea and got it off the ground. They made it clear that they are still learning and starting small is the best way to go.

Leaving the place we were asked if there was some kind of women's lib/women's league meeting in there haha which just made me think of that red hat society.

I came home just wanting to get started on planning and still as I'm writing this I'm thinking of ideas I need to jot down and organize.
------

My college pal Brenda and I registered yesterday at Armory Center for Arts for their summer session Letterpress class! I've been wanting to do this since last summer so I'm really glad it's finally working out. I've found a few other places that teach it but it was double was they charge at Armory. So my Saturdays in July will be filled with this. Here are some pictures Karl took when we went to visit it last summer.



That's it for now!

My friend Carla got me onto reading design sponge a little while ago and I have to say I'm addicted. It features all sorts of neat stuff from DIY before&after's of stuff, up & coming students designs and shop&design store guides in different cities. I was so excited to read about the girl who runs it doing an event here in LA. It's called Biz Ladies Meetup, and it's going to be at the Design Within Reach store on Beverly in a couple of weeks. This is the description of it:

"We’ll break into four groups and rotate between speakers covering PR/Marketing, Wholesaling/Retailing, Business Advice and a local designer talking about their real life success story and how they’ve balanced their life and job while taking their business from hobby to full time job."

I hope to learn a lot and use it when I get working on my personalize stationery/wedding invitation business.

Here is the photo from the Paper Source catalog of the inspiration for the cabinets on the wall thing I was talking about...



Back to work!