A Couple More Frogs

This will probably be the last frog-related post for a while (though I can't promise anything), but I wanted to post pictures of the finished card and print, as well as an in-progress shot of the cut on my little proof press.

Spring Peepers Card

Here's the finished card, printed in green ink on handmade recycled cotton rag printmaking paper. I plan to do some on cattail paper later on, assuming I can salvage the half-made pulp that's fermenting on my picnic table.

I like the green, but the next ones will probably be brown or black. And spring peepers aren't really green, anyway.

Spring Peepers Print

I also did these little frogs as a print, on the same paper, in the same ink. Because the cuts are actually two separate pieces, I could move them around.

As you can see, though, I really liked the configuration I put them in on the card, because even though I wasn't looking at that when I set up the print, they ended up in almost the same places, just farther apart. Ah, well.

In-Progress

Here are the plates on my little table-top proof press, inked up and ready for the paper.

My press is type-high, so to print unmounted lino, I have a piece of 3/4 inch plywood on the bed, then newsprint and mylar to keep things clean (unmounted cuts tend to pick up ink on the back, and mylar is easy to wipe clean). Then the lino goes down, then the paper. On top of that I put another sheet of newsprint, then a press blanket cut from an old wool blanket (like an army blanket, but it's pinkish instead of grey), then two sheets of eska board (bookbinder's board). That gives a nice deep impression on the handmade paper, and if I need to, I can adjust it by changing the amount of board and paper.

Spring Brings Out the Peepers

Here's something I'm working on:

Two little wee linocuts that I'll print on handmade paper tomorrow. I originally planned to print them on cattail paper, but I'm pretty sure I won't have time to make any more paper by the weekend, so I'll print them on some odds and ends of recycled and the last of the last batch of goldenrod paper. I'm thinking of printing them in bright green ink, even though Spring Peepers are usually more brown. Green just seems more springy.

And I finished printing the goldenrod lino today, so tomorrow I'll fold and package the cards. It's on goldenrod paper, of course.

And here's a terrible photo of one of the latest batch of blank books. I'll take better photos of whichever ones are left after the craft fair and get them up on Etsy. I made ten in various colours and configurations, and have one left from the last batch.

Coelacanth: Living Fossil Birthday Card

So here's another one of my recent lino pieces finished.

The actual linocut is one I made several years ago to go with some hand-set type, and I've been wanting to use it again for a card. Here's the inside (also hand-set metal type):

If you're unfamiliar with the reference, the coelacanth is a big, ugly fish that was thought to have been extinct for thousands of years until one turned up in a fisherman's catch in the late 1930s. Since then, it's often been used as an example of a "living fossil."

I am wondering if I should take along some blank inserts with me to the craft fair next week, in case anyone likes the card but not the insides.

Anyway, I only printed a small number for now, because I didn't have many sheets of this particular paper, which was a batch I made to use up some pulp. It's half recycled rag, half goldenrod, but the rag had been frozen and didn't spread out well in the vat, which created the blobby look. And because the goldenrod was the end of the batch, there were a lot of stem bits it it, making the paper brittle and crunchy. I also had problems with the paper sticking to the plate and leaving bits behind, so I had to wipe off the lino and re-ink after every print.

I'll see how these sell before I print more, at which point I'll use a different paper.

New Design and More In-Progress

Phew. I still haven't got back in the groove of blogging. I blame it on finally having something resembling full-time work (with its firm deadlines and all that). But anyway, here are the few little things I've been working one.

Scarab Card

Thing the first (actually, it's thing the second, but it's the first one done, so it gets bumped up): a scarab greeting card.

It's a hand-cut and hand-printed linocut (see my previous post for pictures of the actual plate, if you're interested), printed on handmade (by me) paper. The paper is approximately 50% recycled cotton rag printmaking paper and 50% Nova Scotia goldenrod harvested from my back field. It has a sheet of classic laid paper tipped-in to the inside to make for easier writing, and it comes with a nice deep red envelope.

I had originally planned a multi-colour print for this one, but I started with the black so I'd be able to see how to register the other colours, and I liked how it printed (see that lovely deep embossment? No? Click on the image for a close-up) so much I decided to just go with the black.

Scarab Print

Then I decided to pull a few as prints, which I may do multi-colour, but I think I'll try hand-colouring instead of a multi-block print. I'll try one and see if I like it. But here it is with just black, printed on the same paper as the card version.

The fun thing about these is that the imperfections in the handmade paper actually enhance the print (at least I think so), so I can save all the less-than perfect sheets for prints. Incidentally, the image is my own original design, based on ancient Egyptian and not-so-ancient Art Nouveau images, as well as on actual photos of real scarab beetles.

More Linocut Cards

I don't have individual pictures of the other two cards I'm working on, and won't until they're done, but there they are in the half-finished state.

The fish is a coelacanth, a "living fossil," and it will get a tipped-in insert with "HAPPY BIRTHDAY to a living fossil" printed from hand-set type. The plant is goldenrod, and will have a second colour added. All of these are actually on 50% rag 50% goldenrod paper, but the different batches produced very different results.

The first batch, with the goldenrod flower printed on it, is paler and was made from fresh pulp. The second batch, with the scarab, was made from goldenrod plants that had sat and gone swampy for several weeks because I got busy and had no room in the freezer (it was the actual boiled plants that sat--I rinsed and pulped them after). The paper is much darker. The third batch, with the fish, is the same goldenrod pulp as the second, but the rag pulp came out of the freezer and didn't disperse into the vat very well. I liked the way it looked, though, so I left it.

And that's what I've been up to.

Linocuts in Progress

Yeah, I got a bit swamped with dayjob stuff and with trying to keep up my fiction writing, too, so I haven't posted here in ages. But I have been working on a few things.

I've been teaching letterpress for Extended Studies at NSCAD for the past six weeks or so and the final class is tomorrow. I teach the class again starting in early May. I've been trying to sneak in a little printing time of my own before each class--last week I printed some invitations for a client, but I also got a chance to proof a dragon linocut I made off and on over the last . . . well, too long to tally up, but a long time. Then I managed to leave all the proofs in the shop, so I don't have any pictures to show you. But I will after I bring them home tomorrow.

In the meantime, my worktable has this on it:

Wee little linocuts that I will print on my own handmade paper to make cards. The top one is goldenrod, and it will also have a yellow block, and maybe a green one, depending on how ambitious I feel. It'll be printed on 50% recycled cotton rag / 50% goldenrod paper. Here's a closeup:

And the bottom one is of course a scarab. It's an original design based on a variety of ancient Egyptian sources. I've had a big fascination with beetles for a while, but especially so now that I've got a character growing in my head who has a peculiar affinity for beetles.

I'm especially fascinated by the combination of scarabs and falcons, not just with the wings, but with the big falcon feet, too. Here's a peek into my process, with the original sketch, the tracing paper I used to transfer it to the lino and then used to play with colours, and the lino for the black layer.

I'm planning (if I have time) to do this in two versions: a two- or three-colour one on a greeting card, and then a six-colour limited edition print (black, green, blue, yellow, red, and metallic gold).

And, if you're curious about the beetle character, she's in this short story by my alter ego Nic Silver, available for Amazon Kindle:

Experiments in Papermaking: Goldenrod

So after several years of not making much paper, a request from a client got me working on it again. I ended up making a big batch of recycled paper from 100% cotton rag printmaking paper--mostly proofs and misprints, with a stack of book pages I had done and then decided not to use to round it off. The result was a lovely, soft, speckled-grey paper then took letterpress printing beautifully. I know I've already showed this photo, but here's the result of the job I did for the client.

But I decided that if I'm going to start papermaking again, I want to do some real papermaking, starting with raw plant materials and ending with paper. So I looked around my property and decided we had plenty of goldenrod and tall grasses in the back field. Goldenrod is also a dye-plant, and Nova Scotia has 19 native species. I think I had two different species in what I harvested. I've showed this photo before, too, but here's what I had after an hour or two of cutting plants.

The next step, once the plants are thoroughly dry, is to cut them into pieces, about an inch long or so. When I was done, this blue plastic bin was just about full (for size comparison, it's about half the size of the big bins in the previous photograph). You may notice that even dry, goldenrod stays green.

Then comes boiling. Lots of boiling. I boiled even longer than my book recommended, as the plants just didn't seem to be breaking down at all. Then I rinsed--lots of lovely golden brown water that I'd do something with if I knew anything about dyeing (an experiment for a later date maybe: hand-dyed bookcloth). Then a shorter boil. Then I drained the plants until I'd have time to blend them.

Still quite green, you'll see. And for those curious about the results of my canning-pot quest, I found this one at Value Village. It's even bigger than the one my mom always used (and still uses) for preserves.

Then comes blending. I didn't take a picture of either that or the resulting pulp. But it stayed very green. Dark, lovely, grey-green. Something to do for next time, perhaps, is to file the blades of my blender so they beat rather than cut the pulp.

I tested out the pulp when I did the demo for the awards gala. I mixed it half and half with my recycled rag paper pulp, because I hadn't had time to blend all of what I had boiled, and I wasn't sure how quickly I'd go through it.

Even mixed with the other pulp, the goldenrod still looked very dark when formed into a sheet, so I was glad I hadn't used it for the menus. However, by the time it dried, it became much lighter, and much less green. it's hard to tell from the photo, but the final paper is a greenish grey with straw coloured inclusions (mostly stem pieces) and darker speckles (the larger, greyer ones are from the recycled pulp and the smaller, darker ones are goldenrod).

I still have half a bin of dried goldenrod, plus a pot full of boiled waiting to be pulped, so next I'll try pure goldenrod pulp. At some point, too, I'm going to try boiling with a little bit of lye, to see if it breaks down better and eliminates more of the stem chunks. I'll be making a new postbound book to keep track of my experiments, with a sheet of the resulting paper and a plain sheet with notes on what I did. It'll probably be nicer than this sample book I made sometime in the late 90s.

The next thing I'm going to do, is make a two-colour linocut of goldenrod to print on this paper to make greeting cards. I just have to decide if I'll print directly on the paper, or print on a separate sheet and tip the illustration on. More experiments, I guess.

Updates of Various Sorts

This was going to be a long long post will all kinds of exciting things (and pictures!), but I'm coming down with some form of sickness and I want to get in some fiction writing time before I fall asleep sitting up. So here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to (with a couple pictures).

Letterpress
I finished reprinting the fox-catching-snowflakes and the blue jay cards (my two biggest sellers), and got a brand new design done, which I've titled "Misquoth the Raven" (anyone want to guess where the title comes from?

I also printed a menu for a client, a photo of which you'll find in the next section (I only have two to show you, so I have to spread them out).

I still have two more cards to reprint (the Pirates Santa) and one to print that I have plates for, plus two more I have film but not yet plates for (the rest of the seasons). I would still like to do a calendar, but it's looking less and less likely. I have a grand idea, but no actual designs, let alone film or plates. I suppose I could see if I can re-use a past year's number plates and do a basic wood type with numbers and maybe add images if I get time.

My intro letterpress class has ended, and my pop-up book class (not letterpress, but I won't have a bookbinding update section because I haven't done much of any recently) just got cancelled. Poo.

Papermaking
My experiments are progressing slowly (slowly because all my time seems to be taken up with doing things for other people) (yes, I get paid, but still). I've had some success with recycled printmaking rag paper, on which I printed the menus for a recent awards gala.

And speaking of said gala, I was there in the reception area for a while, demonstrating papermaking. I have a photo of my set-up (and also of paper-marbling-demo-er Rhonda Miller), but it's still on my phone and I'm too lazy to go get my phone and plug it in (didn't I tell you I'm *sick*).

For the demo, I used a mix of recycled paper pulp and the all-new goldenrod pulp. The goldenrod didn't break down as much as I hoped with boiling, and I was beginning to think I might have to buy some lye (I might still, to do this as a proper experiment). But once I ran it through the blender, the big twiggy bits were minimalized, so maybe I don't need lye. Of course, my blender is rather new (thanks, Canadian Tire, for your fake money that I saved up until I had a huge fat wad that the poor cashier had to count), and therefore sharp, and probably cut up the pulp more than it should have. So another future part of the experiment will be filing the blades dull.

Oh, and a trip to Value Village on the way home from Halifax one day netted me the most enormous canning pot I've ever seen (and my mother has been canning since before I was born, so I've seen canners). It is now my pulp-boiling pot and is currently full of boiled, wet goldenrod waiting to be blended.

The paper resulting from the recycled-goldenrod mix isn't dry yet--maybe I'll take an iron to it if I feel less lazy later--but it's quite dark, and really a rather nice mossy green. I was expecting paler, and golden-browner, especially after seeing the dark gold-brown liquid I poured off after boiling. But it has stubbornly remained quite green through drying and boiling and pulping and papermaking.

Maybe tomorrow, if I am feeling more capable, or less lazy, I will photograph some of this.

Writing
I seem to have stalled with Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective. I have chapter five waiting to be edited and had hoped to have chapter six written and edited by now. If I can get editing-for-other-people done quickly, maybe I'll get caught up before, well maybe not before the end of the month, but soon.

So Calliope Strange is lazy, and Niko Silvester is anxious to get A Madness of Kentaurs formatted and covered and out at least as an eBook, but that is also stalled, mostly due to lack of time. Sometimes I feel guilty that I am too lazy, but then I actually list all the things I get done in a day and realize that I don't really take any time off except a few times a week to watch TV (even my videogaming is mostly for work these days), and for an hour or so before bed to read. (I rather feel that read should be capitalized. Read. It's very important to me.)

Nic Silver, on the other hand, while not caught up to where he should be (yes, alter ego Nic is a boy--didn't I mention that?), has been writing a fair bit. Brother Thomas's Angel (which will soon have a new title, once I can come up with one) has become insanely long (considering it was originally meant to be a short story), and is still not done. I have about one and a half sections to go, but each section has been around 10 to 15 thousand words. Well, the ones word processed, anyway. The last several are in longhand and will have to be typed. Also he has begun writing "A Pearl Beyond Price" which will be the spooky story the winner of this month's giveaway gets, assuming it is done. I think it's about halfway. Or at least 1/3. I hope. Also it's not so much spooky as kind of creepy. And it will get more creepy, and maybe not in such a good way.

Okay, this ended up being pretty long after all, so I will stop there and apologise for the headlong blather. I have a books to finish now. One that I'm reading, and also one I'm writing. Or several I'm writing.

Oh, wait, one more thing. I have decided that by the end of 2012 I'd like to be making a living solely from writing fiction. Or, rather, making enough from my fiction that I could at least scrape by. Because I don't intend to stop letterpress printing or bookbinding or papermaking or teaching all of the above, but I do intend to stop freelance editing and freelance writing and freelance reviewing and freelance whatever-elsing  and the sooner the better. Yes, it could all go wrong, but I have to try. I've always thought of myself as a writer--a fictionist--first, and a maker-of-things-related-to-books second.

Things Printed and In Progress

It's only mid-October, but the Halifax Crafters winter sale will be here soon, so I'm madly trying to get at least some of the things I had planned finished and ready to sell. I still don't know if I'll get a calendar done or not. I hope so, and I have a great idea, but with so many other things to finish . . . well, we'll just have to see how it goes.

But I did get one of the four seasons cards done the other day. I still have to trim and fold them, which I will do this evening while I'm hanging out in the printshop for Nocturne (if you're in Halifax, stop by; we're open 6 to midnight and will be doing demos, selling our wares, and helping folks print a keepsake on a vintage Vandercook Universal 1 proof press). I have the plates made for the winter card, and almost have the files for autumn and spring ready to send to film, but summer, at least, is printed:

My letterpress class has been going really well, and last class we had reached the stage where the students don't need my help very often. So while they were busy setting type, I assembled some wood type for the first in a series of fun and silly posters I have planned. I decided to use some of rather venerable, already-cut paper that's been around the shop for eons, and just throw the type on the press and see what happened. Because one press had black ink on it and the other had red, those were the colours I used. Then I added the linocut at home yesterday.

If I were to print this again, I'd shift the red type to the left just a little, to line it up with the black type, which would also put it just about in the centre of the page. I'd probably also print it on off-white paper, but I like the black and red--very bookish colours. Both this poster and the summer card will be for sale tonight, and eventually in my Etsy shop.

And one more fun thing that won't be ready for tonight, but will be done for the Halifax Crafters sale, is this (ignore the smudged line of type--I was trying to proof without actually setting up my press, so it shifted):

It will be available both as a little print on my own handmade paper, as above (it's just a little smaller than half letter size), and on the cover of hand-bound blank pamphlet journals. Also, the type won't be smudged or crooked. It's a linocut with hand-set wood and metal type.

I have lots more in the works, but that's all that's ready to show you.

Sleepy Dragonfly

Because I am too sleepy from all the food I cooked and ate today to post a papermaking update, here is a picture of a dragonfly taking a break on one of the felts I use in papermaking:

Experiments In Papermaking 2: Plant Materials

So it looks like I'll be doing a papermaking demo and providing letterpress-printed-on-handmade-paper menus for an event in late October. While the client would be perfectly happy with made-from-recycled-paper paper, I'd like to make something rather more special. Plus, if it turns out, I can add a new product to my shop(s).

So a few minutes ago I came back in from cutting this from my back field:

That's a whole lot of super-tall grass (and there's an even bigger whole lot still uncut if I need more), and (I think) two different plants which are both locally called goldenrod. Although, they're similar enough that it's possible one could be a later-flowering variety of the other. My knowledge of local plants really isn't what it should be, so while these are drying, I'll be researching to find out exactly what they are, so I can include that information with whatever I end up making.

So now I have to let the plants dry (for now they're out in the sun, but if it threatens to rain, I'll move the bins into the shed). Later, they'll be cut up and boiled for a very long time to break the fibres apart. Then comes the blender. Oh, for a proper paper mill! Maybe someday, after I build my printshop (I am very good at dreaming).

And for anyone wondering what the place looks like these days, here's the hill leading up to the back field:

And here's the house with some lovely blue sky and the tree that rattles on the roof in the wind and drops fat water drops on the roof after it rains:

Experiments In Papermaking

I was asked recently about doing a papermaking demo in the fall, so my brain started thinking about handmade paper again. It's been quite a while since I've done any papermaking, and when I did do it, I made pulp primarily from recycled paper (with fibres and various plant materials added for colour and texture). I passed on the name of a local papermaker to the folks who requested the demo, but if she's not available I'll probably be doing it.

A book of handmade paper samples I made many years ago.

Whether or not I end up doing the demo, I do want to add handmade papers to my inventory, and they would be a good way to add more greeting cards to my stock--the right paper can make a card on its own, without any other additions, or can be the foundation for something more elaborate. And letterpress on handmade paper is just devine.

So I've got out my book on papermaking (I'd like to say "books" plural there, but with half my library still on the other side of the country, I only have one on the shelf), and I'll be reading and experimenting with making paper from raw fibres and (I hope) recycled cotton items.

Something I'm Working On

Just a little sneak-peek of something in progress. If you go to the Wayzgoose tomorrow, you might get to see something more finished. If I get it more finished by then . . .

Letterpress: Hand-Coloured Cards in Progress

Here's what I'll be spending my long weekend on:

All of these cards--just under 30 of each--need hand-colouring before I can crop, fold and package them.

 Don't worry, though, I'm not going to be spending hours on each one. Just a couple quick washes of watercolour, or else I'd have to charge so much no one would buy them.

I letterpress printed them on good-quality watercolour paper and left the paper a bit big so I'd have room to paint.

You may recognize the images from this year's calendar Tentacle & Carapace. I figured I aleady had the plates, so I might as well use them.

And living in a coastal city, sea things are popular year-round.

Sea Dragons

As promised, here are the finished sea dragon illustrations I've been working on. They're each 3.5 by 2.5 inches (that's trading card size), and first drawn in pen and ink (india ink with a Hunt 102 "crowquill" dip pen) then coloured with watercolours (Windsor & Newton solid and Pentel tubes--whichever is closer to hand, usually), on Canson Aquarelle cold press 140 lb watercolour paper (which is probably more than most of you wanted to know). If you missed the last two posts here, they both had in-progress shots of these and some other work.

Portrait of a Weedy Sea Dragon

Portrait of a Leafy Sea Dragon

Weedy Sea Dragon

Leafy Sea Dragon

These were done for a sea dragon themed challenge swap (the challenge being to try to draw/paint realistic sea dragons, which are complicated little fishes), and they'll be mailed off to the swap co-ordinator tomorrow. And yes, they were some of the ones I'm finding it very hard to part with, as I mentioned last post. I especially like the last two.

Tomorrow: flying fish!

In Progress: Collaborative Book Project

I had a bit of an "oh shit" moment earlier in the week when I remembered that I had signed up to participate in a collaborative book project for the Bookbinding Etsy Street Team (aka BEST). I hadn't even started yet. Then there was more panic as I searched through my emails only to discover that I had accidentally deleted the instructions, the poem we were meant to be working with, and the post with the due date and the stanza I got in the random draw. I sent off a quick, embarrassed email to my group (there were enough people for several 5-person groups), and very quickly got two responses with the required information from a couple of my (very supportive) team members.

So the project is this: members of BEST were assigned to 5-person groups, and each group got a poem to work with (ours was written by one of our group members). Then each person makes 6 copies of a signature (in this case, one sheet folded into a 2-leaf signature) inspired by the poem. Then we send 5 of the 6 copies of our completed signature to the project organizer, who sends 4 of them to the other group members, and keeps the fifth to bind herself. When we get the other four members' work, we bind them into a book. The 6th copy of the book will be bound by the project organizer and exhibited.

My group's poem is "The Garden of Her Heart" by Eva Buchala, and I got the second stanza, full of weed and flower and tree imagery. I may be working a little more literally than the project requires, but I couldn't resist the plants! The image of a bent and twisted tree especially captured my imagination, so that's where I started, with a centre spread. Here's the sketch:

I had thoughts of doing this as a print, so I wouldn't have to draw the same image over and over again six times. As I sketched, I decided that if my resulting design was simple enough to cut quickly in lino (quickly because I need to finish and mail by Friday), I'd do linoprints. I don't have the facilities at home (yet) to do any other kind of printing, alas. When I had a sketch I liked, I realized that it wouldn't be easy enough to do in lino that I could do it quickly. I briefly entertained the idea of scanning and printing digitally, then hand-colouring, but my laser printer chokes on paper that isn't specifically made for printers, and the ink on my lovely inkjet will run with watercolours on top of it. So hand-drawing it is.

I spent several hours yesterday afternoon/evening inking trees. I had to go to plan B for transferring the image. Plan A was to ink directly on the blank paper by working on my lightbox with the sketch underneath. Sadly, my sketch was not dark enough and the lights in my lightbox not bright enough, to penetrate the heavy printmaking paper I chose. So plan B was to rub graphite on the back of the sketch and trace over the lines as if I had transfer paper under. By the time I did that six times, my hand was already getting tired and I still had the actual ink to do.

So there it is. I basically drew the same tree six times, and finished just in time to catch Treme on HBO. It's drawn with india ink and a crowquill on BFK Rives printmaking paper in grey. I don't know why I picked the grey paper. It just seemed a nice change from my usual brown/cream tones. Though of course when it's done, there will be a lot of brown on the tree . . .

Next I'll transfer and ink the pages on the other side. When that's dry, I'll start the colouring--first one side, then dry, then the other side. Then I'll add the text. If all goes well, I should be done in plenty of time to mail them out on Friday.

And here are all the trees with the sketch after tracing over it six times:

ACEO: Leonardo's Clockwork Scarab

One of my fellow Etsy Steam Team members offered some very cool copper and brass etched ACEOs (Art Cards, Edition and Originals) to trade and I piped up saying I'd make a tiny linocut. Well, turns out 3 1/2 by 2 1/2 inches is really tiny. Not that I can't do a lino that small, it's just that I came up with a design I really liked, but which was way too complex for lino. So instead I did an ink drawing and scanned it, then added some gears in Illustrator (thanks to the "Gears" typeface from Scriptorium which came in a pack of faces I bought a while ago for doing titles for my comics).

Then I wrestled with my laser printer for a while until I determined that it wasn't going to print onto printmaking rag paper no matter how I cajoled or threatened it. So I printed the images onto rag paper with my lovely Canon Pixma Pro9000 photoprinter instead. It may be time for a new laser printer. Here are some of the cards, not yet coloured.


Next I have to see if the photo inks will withstand water. If they do, I'll tea-stain the paper to age it, and then hand-colour with watercolours. If they don't, I'll carefully tea-stain only the very edges, then hand-colour with pencil crayon. I need to get these done, because the one I'm trading for was in today's mail.

So if you want to trade, let me know. I'm doing 15 of these, and one's spoken for, plus I'll keep one or two. Whatever's left I'll put in my Etsy and ArtFire shops.

And, in case it isn't obvious, it's a scarab beetle, with clockwork, and wings inspired by one of Leonardo daVinci's flying machines. I think I'm still going to attempt a tiny ACEO linocut, but not a scarab flying machine. Maybe just a simple beetle.

2010 Flying Machines Calendar!

On Tuesday I finished the last printing I needed to get done before the new year: my 2010 "Flying Machines: possible and improbable" calendar.


On Thursday I trimmed, hole-punched and packaged all 30 of them, and of course signed and numbered them. I had already pre-sold two at the Halifax Crafter's Market, and had two other people interested in buying when they were finished. So I've now sold 5, will keep one for my files, and will probably use 5 or so for gifts. So that leaves 19 for sale in my Etsy shop and my ArtFire shop.

The calendars are printed on one of my favourite (non-handmade) papers for letterpress: Mohawk Via Vellum 80 lb cover. The 100 lb is nice, too, but doesn't fold as well for greeting cards, so I usually buy the 80. The vellum finish gives it a soft texture that doesn't interfere with the printing as heavily textured papers sometimes do. I chose warm white for this, rather than my usual cool white--although cool white tends to have less affect on the ink colour, the warm white seemed better suited to the subject matter, and goes well with the brown ink.

I printed the names of the months first, using a different historic wood type from the Dawson Printshop's collection for each month. I added a lot of transparent base to the ink, and printed relatively lightly in order to get all the texture and imperfections of the old wooden type to show up. For printing the wood type, I used the shop's Vandercook Universal 1 proof press.

Then I printed the numbers and the images at the same time, from polymer plates. I used quite a bit of packing on the cylinder to bring up the pressure and get a nice deep embossment (technically debossment, I suppose). The letters for the days of the week were printed the same way, only with a different colour of ink, of course. The polymer plates were all printed on the shop's Vandercook Universal 2 proof press, a very rare press (apparently only 50 or so were made).

All of the images except two are ones that I found in my various history of flight books (I have a small collections). Many of them are Victorian, and a few of them were in full colour, which meant I had to remove the colour in Photoshop before converting the files to vectors. The two images that weren't ones from my own books came from a file of miscellaneous images on the Printshop computer. Some of the machines pictured actually flew, while others are simply exercises in imaginations.

I'm going to post a contest here soon, where you'll be able to win a copy of the calendar. I think what I'll do is make it a trivia contest, where you'll have to identify some of the machines--maybe which ones actually flew, for example. More on that very soon.