Category Archives: printing

Super Recycled

The truth about recycled paper is that normally it’s not so great. Usually it only comes in light weights and smooth finish and, well, not the super duper best recipient of letterpress…

So when I caught wind (no pun intended – you’ll see) of this fairly new product, I had my doubts.  This paper is not only 100% recycled, it super soft and comes in some great colors. 

It also is comprised of 75% or so Elephant Poop. monkey on poop paper

YUP. 

I printed on it recently. The color is a super awesome bright green. I used it for a birth announcement (appropriate, right?) for my friend Nikki Flores (who has logged some hours as a letterpress printer but gave that all up to go to Harvard Law and raise a child at the same time…..) and printed this monkey on it. 

It took pressing really nicely. It’s super airy, giving the print a pillowy feel that all us letterpress lovers seek.

As I was printing it, I kept wondering if it was weird that I was touching this processed poop, but at the end of the day, touching elephant pooh paper doesn’t weird me out…. but I would second guess licking any envelopes!!

Lavender scented wedding invitations…..!!!

Jeri & ChristopheI have been slammed. I will be honest. It was as if everyone was getting married on the same day this summer thus sending out their invitations on the same day! Now, that isn’t at all true, but that’s how it felt over at the Tiny Pine Press studio.

In the hub-ub of the past month, I had many notable moments which I hope to share in the next couple of weeks. One notable experience was with this Lavender invitation. It was inspired by an invitation I did a couple of years back for Jeri Ryan & Christophe Émé’s wedding in the French countryside. (Though starred on Star Trek : Voyager, these are the most opposite of outer space invitations ever! Cotton, hand-made and old world as it gets with the hand letterpress!)

(Though actually, they were completely 100% tree free… and THAT is sort of like outer space, but I digress….)

This new client was very detail oriented and wanted two lavenders attached to this beautiful cotton handmade paper. I searched for the perfect lavender plants and found a really wonderful local farm who supplied a bounty of lavender stems to choose from. They smelled great. and when we glued them on, and stacked all the invitations, the lavender scent emanated from the papers to fill the room…. yum!

Sharon gluing Hidecote Lavender

(I hope the guests got a whiff of the lavender when it came in the mail. I have worked with dried lavender many times and this was the most fragrant batch. OH, the variety is called Hidecote.)

It was a fun afternoon of gluing. I had my good friend Sharon Lowe (who is a floral designer – smart right?) help me glue the lavenders. Sharon understands how the plants want to go… and even which ones. We chatted with the lavender stems all afternoon. And then a week later chatted them into the envelopes and off to the guests.. You know that plants have feelings too! I think these lavenders were happy in their more permanent home, glued on these elegant invitations. I hope!!

I think I am a pretty good communicator but if the lavenders aren’t happy, I fear they will get revenge on me by getting lost in the mail! or revolting and busting out of their envelopes or something. It happens (More on that subject later)!

See… I AM delirious! Personification of Plants. Not a good sign……..

Letterpress Name Stars

What does that title even mean??  

Today I printed a birthday part invitation – it was in two runs with clean justified type for Henry’s 40th birthday. 

The client asked for Red ink. Now, what you may or may not know is that RED ink is the most difficult ink to pin down in the pantone book. As I was printing this last bit of the invitation today, I told my office-mate that Red is my Achilles Heel. I had to pick the red, which I put off til the last minute. Why is that? why do I have such a hard time with red… Well, let’s look deeper for an answer……

Anne of Card Tricks Designs, my office-mate, was talking about color combinations one day. She had a client who wanted to use Orange and Blue. An oceany blue or kind of turquoise one. She instantly complained that she didn’t really like that combo, and wanted to shift the blue to navy or something. I actually like the original combo though it does remind me of the Miami Dolphins…. 

But then she revealed that Orange and that same kind of blue were her junior high colors. and that she always hated that color combo for that reason. 

henrys40thtestIt was at that moment when I figured it out. RED and white were the colors of the Marion Senior High School Hurricanes…. it is very clear. I don’t like straight red for the same reason Anne doesn’t. 

Incidentally, I also don’t particularly care for Kelly Green and white, the colors of Sugar Grove Combined School. Though I don’t really have a problem with Purple and white, the colors of Northwestern University. HMMMM???

I only can wonder if every graphic designer has the same feeling about their school colors. Maybe those formative years are just very color sensitive?

In any case, here is a little starburst of sillyness I printed today…. testing out the red and white for Henry’s invitations….

Spikey/Soft

I know, I know…. it’s been awhile since the last post…. I have been very busy busy on lots of projects for the past three weeks! 

The other day I had a good reason to have a bunch of photos taken of my apartment… It was fun, mostly because I had a professional photographer, Joshua Targownik, snapping the pictures. He did an amazing job and took this particular one… (more are forthcoming, I promise)dandelion spiderweb….

I wanted to talk about this understated set though it it probably understated compare to the rest of my colorful surroundings full of phones and flowers. I took a copper etching class a couple of years ago and found it completely delightful even though I am a letterpress printer for a living. It was a chance to play and make art completely without a computer (usually I do the artwork & typesetting on the computer and then print… you know…). 

Anyways, I got into the idea of juxtaposing two similarly shaped things which had the same lines but completely different meanings. Now, I am not sure if my idea comes across totally, but I etched out a dandelion puff and a spider web. Mind you, they were scrapped freehand completely in copper using a sharpish needle… I didn’t exercise a lot of control over my lines but I liked the look. was trying to use the same kinds of lines in both images but in different directions… sort of.. they both have the same base structure but the small lines either connect to one another or puff out… I think maybe the dandelion puff is the feminine and the spiderweb is the masculine. the same, but different…

Then using a very simple but wonderful process & press, I printed these on handmade paper. This is so yummy because the copper plate completely mushes the texture out of the paper, leaving the area around it smoooooooth. I love that part! yum!

I  mounted them on pale yellow handmade paper with a natural deckle and taped some string to the back and then I had two new pieces of art for my walls. Lovely!

Is it post-modern to blog about a blog about Tiny Pine?

My friend and one of my favoritest picture-makers Gia Canali has a blog and she just interviewed me a couple of days ago for it. I thought it would be fun to link to the blog because that would maybe become a blog vortex of clicking and no one would ever leave! yay!

It was actually really fun to do the interview. I did fell a little funny that my answers would be on the internet but I then i realized that I am already talking on the internet…. so I must be a little bit entertaining if YOU are reading this right now? right? Hopefully I can come across sort of knowledgeable too! (Don’t tell me any differently, please!)

I was a little surprised when I read back over my answers in some spots… particularly the Ugly Betty comments – you will have to read her blog to know what I am referring to – because I had just seen an episode a couple of days before and I felt maybe that I was misinformed about soy inks, or that the writers didn’t research very well… I think it was the latter.

here's the card i did for gia

Here's the card I made for Gia's Business

I loved talking about Verdie, my press, and I think I come off a little more chatty than I am on this blog about myself…. if you can imagine that. It’s easier sometimes to answer questions than to just make up what you want to say……..

But enough about me and Tiny Pine, let’s talk about GIA! She is a great photographer. We have both been apart of a couple of weddings as the vendors. She is super organic in her style and aesthetic. She uses both film and digital photography (kind of like how I use letterpress and laser or inkjet) and she does a variety of printing processes and treats her photos in lovely ways. I think we are sort of fraternal twins, maybe. We come from the same place but we do different things. (We were just talking on the phone about how we both are from the country and mountains and if that comes across in our work…)

Anyways…. I am so glad she decided to feature me in her blog…. I will do the same for my fraternal twin… Gia Canali is great. take a look at her site!

Little Verdie in her New Home

In the past couple of weeks there has been LOTS of change at Tiny Pine Press because I moved my studio across town, from a becoming over-crowded space to a shared studio with lots more privacy, without shutting down production and even squeezing in jury duty throwing a baby shower for one of my best friends (who had her baby today!! and I got to be in the room for the birth shooting video and photos).

In that time, I moved Verdie, my Chandler & Price Pilot Press. I was so nervous about shifting her weight that I had my friend drive her separately, very very slowly in his ultra large SUV and daring him make any dramatic stops…. begging him to drive with ease and quiet through Friday afternoon traffic in Los Angeles, changing freeways 4 times…

littleverdie

She faired just fine, and I placed Verdie into her new home. I tested her out sans ink to make sure nothing shifted somehow – she IS held together by bolts. OLD bolts – and then I left her. 

She has a room with a view out the window in this new place. She has her own room. It’s sort of small but she is small (only 200 lbs.) She sits on her tiny table made of pine and just waits for me.

Tomorrow I am making the final move…. Putting all the computery things in the big office space section of the studio, and I am going to print 3 runs on Verdie and see how she likes her new space. I think she does… there is a little window that lets in a good amount of light and it is quite cozy in there with everything in reachable distance.

Here’s a picture of my little press, in her new space… Doesn’t she look so happy??

A Crow and a Swan

soy crow

These days I feel inclined to write a lot about ways to reuse or recycle things we sometimes think of as waste. Let’s talk trash!

I have always used soy-based inks for letterpress printing, except for the metallics which don’t come in soy. When I mix an ink color for a job, I try to only mix the right amount… you only use a teensy bit really to print. But sometimes it just happens that the ink blob gets bigger and bigger as you try to get the right shade of whatever. It just happens….

When I was working at soolip in west hollywood as the designer, the printer at the time, Joel Larson, would make crazy paintings with his leftover ink. They were beautiful abstract works that he would layer on to whatever scraps of paper he had lying around.

I took that as inspiration when I had extra ink to get rid of. So even though I tried only to mix as much as I need, there is always some leftovers and so I started making paintings of my own.

soy swan

These two birds are my favorites so far. Soy has a much faster drying time than most oil or rubber based inks for some reason. And what is cool and sort of unique is the way it dries when layered on the paper thick. It takes a sort of brainy texture giving the ink pile depth, almost sculptural.

Just a side note, the cardboard pieces are the packaging from the letterpress plate shipment. Making art from trash….my favorite thing!

Raised to Reuse

I am a real conservative when it comes to printing. Not conservative in a political or religious way… but in an environmental way.ziplock drying rack In my family we reused as much as possible. This is a photo of my cousin JC’s drying rack. He washes and reuses the ziplock bags multiple times (I love how he hangs them to dry) (the photos a little blurry). I try to reuse as much as possible. At work and at home. 

This week I got to reuse in the best way.

A client had sent out 150 save the dates. They were 100% tree free or recylced based on what we could get paper-wise because she has a big commitment to conservation as well.  Of those sent, she had the wrong addresses for 6 people, so the save the dates came back to her. Instead of resending out new save the dates, requiring me to make up some more from scratch, she brought the returned ones back to me and I printed new envelopes and reused those perfectly good save the dates. 

Now, I know that this form of reusing seems fairly simple and obvious. But I have been working at this career for 5 years now, and I can only remember a couple of other times when I did this. Sometimes reusing returns is necessary because we run out of whatever it is that is being sent (same as this case). But running out is actually directly related to being a conservative printer. I can’t stand wasting paper so I don’t usually print many over what is ordered.

And this client’s decision to bring the save the dates back so I could reuse them, well, that’s a testament to her commitment. 

For the record, when I do have extras, I try to reuse those as make-ready for letterpress or for the big scrap bin for making valentines, birthday cards or other crafty things. Here’s a photo from a mess in my apartment floor from the “sometimes annual pre-valentine’s day ice cream social” that I have so my friends can make art with the year’s printing leftovers.valentine making mess

Can you tell I was the president of the energy club in high school?? I also represented the energy club in the beauty pageant when I was 14. I am not posting that picture, though. No Way!

I will tell you that it was a really big pink puffy dress…. Someone should reuse that thing for a big tablecloth and matching napkins.