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!