I hope all the lovely mothers out there had a wonderful Mother’s Day, I know I did!

So now that we’re back up, I’ll make sure to get a good post or two in the next day or so. If you still read the blog, thanks! :) I know it’s been sporadic recently as I catch up from Mother’s Day and prepare for Father’s Day. I’ll see you back here soon!

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I know I owe you the last installment of The Making of a Collection posts, but before I finish that off, I hope you don’t mind a little interruption for something I’d like to show you. I designed this invitation a while ago and was so excited about it I printed it in one night! I ended up shooting it twice. I hope I’ve captured it well now although I foresee another shoot in the near future as I will be printing the thank you card as well and possibly making some cool liners. We’ll see.

So here’s a look at this new invite. I like it a lot actually, hope you do too. :)

It’s been quite a while since I last wrote and a lot has been going on over here. I’m enjoying it all but as it is, I need a little mini vacation I think. Currently, I’m running on 3.5 hours of sleep and it’s not boding well.

Before I get back into telling you about my collection, I wanted to give a shout out to the EtsyGreetings Team. I should have done it a long time ago but as I haven’t even had time to sleep I’m sure you understand.

Apart from being an amazing group of people, they are wonderful artists. They’ve honored me as team member of the month but I should have told you about that and the Giveaway a long time ago since they’re both practically over. Still, I wanted to give them a shout out as they’re amazing and help me keep my sanity on days like this when I’ve had no sleep.

Now on to part II of Making a Collection…

I left off having put together a digital version of my designs as a collection. The next step is to get each design ready to make it into a plate. For letterpress, . . . → Read More: The Making of a Collection: Part II]]>

It’s been quite a while since I last wrote and a lot has been going on over here. I’m enjoying it all but as it is, I need a little mini vacation I think. Currently, I’m running on 3.5 hours of sleep and it’s not boding well.

Before I get back into telling you about my collection, I wanted to give a shout out to the EtsyGreetings Team. I should have done it a long time ago but as I haven’t even had time to sleep I’m sure you understand.

Apart from being an amazing group of people, they are wonderful artists. They’ve honored me as team member of the month but I should have told you about that and the Giveaway a long time ago since they’re both practically over. Still, I wanted to give them a shout out as they’re amazing and help me keep my sanity on days like this when I’ve had no sleep.

Now on to part II of Making a Collection…

I left off having put together a digital version of my designs as a collection. The next step is to get each design ready to make it into a plate. For letterpress, each color has to be separated into its own plate as each color is run separately on the press. What this means for each file is bringing it into Illustrator and separating each color out and making sure it’s 100% black. This is done so that the plates print properly. Here’s a sample of one of the separated plates.

Once that is taken care of with each design, the files are then sent off to be made into photopolymer plates. I get quite excited when I get a package full of plates. It just means for fun me. Trying out the plates and different color combinations I’ve tried out on the computer. It’s great to see them all on paper and start putting them together.

I usually pick out all my colors on the computer as I design the cards. Then I match them to PMS colors I can then look up in my Pantone guide. Mixing colors can be very fun all on its own. Some people like to be very exact and use scales and such. I just use the parts measurements and I always come pretty close to the color I want. Then it’s off to print. This process is by far the most exciting and the most time consuming. It’s what all this work is geared towards and once you start seeing test prints, it’s really rewarding.

 With the advantage of social media and so many wonderful apps like Instagram, which I LOVE, I like to quickly photograph what I’m working on at the moment and post it. It’s a nice way to show the progression of a project and somehow it also makes me feel connected to a small community of people who really appreciate this type of work.

Most of the following images in this and most likely the next post were all taken with my phone right into Instagram. That is how I’m able to show you this entire process because I really did take photos of everything as I went along. I love reading those types of posts and I absolutely love seeing those types of photos on Instagram. I really enjoy seeing what people are working on and how they do it, what inspires them. It’s so interesting and makes me feel connected.

I hope you’re enjoying this little mini series, even though there was quite a long break between the second installment. Next up, I’ll show you some photos of the press and how it’s set up to print. Hope your week is starting out well. Once I take a nap, I have a feeling mine will be great!

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I’ve been MIA recently because I’ve been swamped with work and with listings for a new house (yay!), BUT I wanted to jump on here quickly and tell you that my Spring 2012 Collection was featured on Paper Crave today! So if you have a moment, please stop by and check it out! I’m pretty excited!

I promise I will get back to giving you all the ins and outs of how the collection was made once I get a few projects out of my hair, hopefully in a day or so.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful week. Talk to you very soon!

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Having a baby to care of, I usually have to stay up pretty late at night if I really want to get anything done and it just so happens that I do my best work at that time too. I was getting some orders ready and I was waiting on my printer so I took a few of my test prints from the press and started doodling. I have been very inspired by calligraphy and hand lettering recently and so I started making my own little doodles and decided I liked some of them enough to save…

I kept coming back to these doodles and after a couple of days of visualizing it all in my head I knew I wanted to make these into letterpressed cards, especially the MOM one. I also made the decision to make it into a line after I continued to doodle. They were just coming together so I figured a collection was . . . → Read More: The Making of a Collection: Part I]]> I’ve never really set out to make a collection even though I’ve always admired people who do and I love to it when collections come out as well. For me, it was sort of a happy accident.

Having a baby to care of, I usually have to stay up pretty late at night if I really want to get anything done and it just so happens that I do my best work at that time too. I was getting some orders ready and I was waiting on my printer so I took a few of my test prints from the press and started doodling. I have been very inspired by calligraphy and hand lettering recently and so I started making my own little doodles and decided I liked some of them enough to save…

I kept coming back to these doodles and after a couple of days of visualizing it all in my head I knew I wanted to make these into letterpressed cards, especially the MOM one. I also made the decision to make it into a line after I continued to doodle. They were just coming together so I figured a collection was in order. :)

After much designing and adjusting, I decided I wanted a very soft, Spring feel and I went for my favorite colors, soft peach, lime green, and bright aqua and I threw in a pastel yellow in for a sunny feel.

After I decided on the colors I started thinking about the size I wanted the cards to be. This helped with the design process as I had a clear direction of where I wanted to go. I knew I wanted to work on some 4Bar designs. I’ve always liked that size and I think it’s a good go-to size for a quick little note. So as I finished each design I started to put them together to make sure they worked well together as a collection. Many tweaks later, I had the final collection.

I decided to print them on Pearl Lettra instead of the Fluorescent White I always use. It gave them a much warmer tone that I really liked. Now I was ready for the next step!

Stay tuned!

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I’ve been working on this small line for weeks now and it has finally come together. I’m happy to say that despite little kinks here and there, everything turned out as expected and I am planning to share a lot about the process in the next post or two, in case you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Here are some more photos of the cards themselves, they’re quite pretty!

Stay tuned for some photos about the whole process. From design to printing, I took a lot of photos so you’re sure to see how this all came together.

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Source: PromotionalCodes.net

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Photographing this set was quite fun. It looked great from every angle and the stark black gives it such a crisp, clean look. I also had a lot of fun experimenting with the vintage stamps I just received and they really made a wonderful addition to the photos. Even though I thought I wasn’t going to be able to shoot anything today because it was a bit cloudy, I’m pretty happy with the way these turned out.

So what do you think? I wanted this set to be very simple but classy. I paired up one of my favorite typefaces, Mrs. Eaves with one I acquired recently that is starting to become a favorite as well, Samantha. Samantha has a lot of beautiful alternates to work with and I could spend hours experimenting with them.

So all in all, . . . → Read More: Grace, a classy girl]]> I was hoping to have this ready for you to see yesterday but it just ended up being too late, so I figured I’d end the week with a bang. I’m quite proud of this suite, specially because my husband gave it his approval saying it’s not too girly.

Photographing this set was quite fun. It looked great from every angle and the stark black gives it such a crisp, clean look. I also had a lot of fun experimenting with the vintage stamps I just received and they really made a wonderful addition to the photos. Even though I thought I wasn’t going to be able to shoot anything today because it was a bit cloudy, I’m pretty happy with the way these turned out.

So what do you think? I wanted this set to be very simple but classy. I paired up one of my favorite typefaces, Mrs. Eaves with one I acquired recently that is starting to become a favorite as well, Samantha. Samantha has a lot of beautiful alternates to work with and I could spend hours experimenting with them.

So all in all, I think another week ended on a high note. Hope you enjoyed these and I hope you have a wonderful and restful weekend. See you back here next week!

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I happened to come across some really sweet letterpress stationery last night by InkPrint Letterpress and then again today, I saw something I liked and it was by the same studio. I followed Sarah on Twitter and it struck up a great couple of messages and I went on to read her blog and aside from some pretty cool stationery, I also found a great post with some pretty useful information for all you shop owners out there looking to get found through Facebook. Needless to say, you should also check out her great etsy shop, chockfull of delightful letterpress goodies.

Ok, now I’m off to print!

Many of you perhaps, are familiar with my Tweets cards. These are little illustrations I started a while back of two little birds that turned out to be quite cute. I’ve illustrated them in all sorts of situations and I really enjoy doing it. They’re very fun to work on and really have a personality all their own. I decided to try to letterpress them and the result was very pleasing indeed (well, for me anyway)!

So what do you think? I’m thinking of doing a couple more and possibly start converting them all, slowly of course.

I’m going to go shoot the other project I was working on last night and possibly even finish one more piece for it. If I’m able to, I’ll be back to show you, if not, definitely tomorrow. See you soon!