celebrate

After an incredibly busy week last week, I had a very relaxing weekend. I spent my free time on Sunday in the Letterpress studio printing some hilarious invitations/posters for a friends' birthday party at my house in a few weeks. I am quite proud of them, and thought I would share a bit of the printing process.


Back in August, I bought a few halftone blocks at an antique store in Western Maryland. I thought these invitations would be the perfect opportunity to use the one of the older lady. In the letterpress shop, I found the other halftone of the man on the right, in a drawer of miscellaneous items. Amazingly it was about the same size as the one of the lady. Then I found a drawer of wood type that fit exactly the width of the blocks! Amazing! My design just sprung from there. The photo above is of the lockup I had to do on the press bed. It was a challenge getting everything not to move.


I had to do a bit of make-ready by adding a few pieces of paper to the bottom of the halftone man block and some tape to the edge of the ampersand and a few of the borders. Other than that, printing was pretty much a breeze taking me about three hours from the time I set type to the time I cleaned the rollers off.



I printed on a Vandercook No. 4. The one in the shop has a slightly lopsided bed that can sometimes affect the way your composition will ink, but I didn't have much of a problem with this. If anything, any uneven-ness that occurred added to the concept.

Here is a preview of the final on the drying rack. Really excited to give these out to everyone today.