Tiny Pine was started 7 or 8 years ago when I sewed presents onto chopped up trader joes bags and then sewed those onto cardstock for last minute birthday cards. I sold those for a while and made a sort of card line. They were cute and quirky. I know where the sewing thing comes from… , my mom and several aunts and uncles worked at Mr. Casuals for 30 years – a sewing factory in southwest Virginia that produced Ralph Lauren and Osh Kosh and lots of sort of high end jeans and pants and such. My grandma made many many quilts (my mom too). It’s almost genetic.

But why do I love the brown paper bag?

Well, I got a delivery on my doorstep yesterday for my Birthday Present. Every package from my mom looks like this. She literally puts everything in a brown paper bag and wraps it with tape and addresses right on there. The shape doesn’t matter (I’ve gotten round packages) AND she also sticks crazy stamps and stickers on it. I almost don’t want to open it I love it so much.

PS Here is another good example of reusing. That paper bag got a good work out before it got to me.

Thanks Momma!

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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.

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!

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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.

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.

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