Oakland trash

This favored illustration of mine, now several years old, has found yet another manifestation: a letterpressed postcard. This sweet little card, along with three other designs, will be for sale at all three Pegasus Books locations in Berkeley and Oakland. Exciting!

All Along the Bell Tower

Remember when I drew this? 

Well, I decided to letterpress a postcard from this drawing. I scanned it...

 ... separated the linework and had a polymer plate made...

... then printed a 4 x 6 postcard on the Vandercook Press at Olive Route Design.

Isn't that linework YUMMY on the cardstock?

 

Buy these on my Etsy page, or by stopping into the Pegasus Bookstore on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, where they're on sale at the register!

#1 Reason to Visit Wisconsin

Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. Wow. I heard about this place several months ago, from a friend I met in Buenos Aires, a young letterpress printer with a penchant for nostalgic US American printing (think Hatch Show Print). He asked with great enthusiasm if I had ever been to Wisconsin? I explained that Wisconsin wasn't really a place most people dream of visiting. "But it's the home to Hamilton Museum!" he replied, and after some online investigations I, too, aspired to visit Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

A special someone gifted me the visit to this museum, as a 26th birthday present. We flew into Chicago and drove up along Lake Michigan to Two Rivers until we saw the tall smokestack that said "Hamilton."

 

Vintage and handcrafted eye-candy abounds in the museum, as well as past and current printed material from linocut broadsides to typeset posters. One wall featured a collage of oversized wood typography that superstore Target used as a background for models in a fairly recent photo shoot. (Target collaborated with Hamilton to create a line of type-centered apparel. Check out the video here!) Once a factory, now a museum. 

experience is acquired, not manufactured = a good reminder

This is the machine once used to put lines on lined paper!

Valentiney (well, Anytimey) Greetings

In the daily shuffling of life and love it is all too easy to forget that the connections we have made with one another - friends or family, past or present, big loves or small - are, indeed, real. Upon a request from a special someone to reprint the "This Connection Is Real" card featured in a past post (see "Lauren's Last Day" May 2011), I decided to post it for sale in time for Valentine's Day.

We get to choose who we want to hold close in our hearts, despite geographical or temporal distance, and each day we get another chance to remind one another that that thing we shared once, long ago, is still very much real.

Please visit my Etsy site to review and/or purchase this very unique Valentine card!

Lauren's Last Day at Olive Route

Last May I started my dream internship at Olive Route Press, and last week it came to a quiet end. Over the past year I have learned so much from VSM about letterpress printing and design, how to run a small business, and how to nourish career choices that are personally fulfilling as well as economically viable. With her help I further specified my goals as an artist, leaning more toward illustration and collaboration. Thanks, Via! On my last day, she greeted me with a gorgeous bouquet wrapped in this great vividly patterned paper:

 

I then proceeded to work my butt off all day printing personal collateral - notecards, stationery, and oversized business cards - featuring the handwritten name of my blog (homage to my favorite inspirational quote by modern dance choreographer Martha Graham) letterpressed in a dusky gold ink. Since I plan to pair these with some quirky yet soulful Nick Bantock-esque envelopes I discovered at Paper Source, I stuck to neutral papers: a textured off-white for the square cards and letterhead, recycled cardstock and thick ivory for business cards.

Click any picture to enlarge for detail

 

 

 

Surprise! This one has an orange interior, sweeeeeeet!

 

This should last me awhile!

 

You are good!

... the latter of which reminds me to remind you to stay tuned for more on my "professional identity."

Baby shower: Hello, Cloie!

My big cousin is carrying the first baby of the new Aczon generation! The little girl, named for our grandmother Clotilde, is expected to join our family in June or July of this year. We call her Cloie for short (pronounced like Chloe).

I printed these postcards for her baby shower a few weeks ago. We set up a table with markers and stamps, and invited guests to write some words of widsom, love, or welcome to our baby girl.

a small testament to the butterfly tattoo on Cloie's mommy

Courtesy of Paper Plus Outlet on San Pablo, Berkeley

I paired a bold wood type with the feminine and highly symbolic butterfly (hand carved for another occasion by VSM), in a pink and green that matched the original Evite sent out to family and friends. I rounded the corners and found some cute vintage postmark rubber stamps to embellish the writing side of the postcard, just for fun.

Hello, Cloie!

Exquisite leftovers

You said it, sistah. 

Or rather, our poor huddling hearts are the battlefields upon which the wars of love are waged, each conflict leaving indelible cannon wheel grooves and piles of shrapnel around the place. Yowzah.

Camille, my fellow letterpress intern, used her blessed genius to transform leftover ink, leftover paper, and leftover plates into something truly beautiful. As usual. Click her name to discover her blog, and info about her upcoming zine release party!