Whew!

Well I think I've finally recovered from the Des Moines Art Festival! It was a long and pretty warm weekend, but overall I had a good time. All my preparations and planning finally went into full swing.

I saw a lot of great people and had a lot of help from my family and friends (thanks you guys!!!!). I couldn't have done it without you.

Since I was one of the Iowa Emerging Artists, I was required to do a demonstration during the weekend festivities. My prints are generally printed with my Nolan proof press, but due to its weight, I decided to just print by hand. Thanks to Grant for his lovely "arty" photos :)

I brought a bunch of my tools and even had the linocut locked up in a galley to show during my demo. I had quite a few people stop by and hope they enjoyed learning a little more about printmaking.

Process Ladder

Process Ladder
Originally uploaded by frank-chimero

I love the work of Frank Chimero and I think this illustration is great. Reminds me of our process books in Advanced Graphic Design, there to show the process.

Awesome Fabric Flowers

flowers to wear
Originally uploaded by calamity kim

Aren't these beautiful!?!!! I've been wanting to make some fabric flowers forever now and I'm totally in love with these. Check out the tutorial at Calamity Kim.

Put a Record on...

Likewise, this is also hilarious. Especially with the vast amounts of records spewing from our house.

Via Printeresting

A Tiny Press

This was too great not to post!

via Printeresting

Hometown Vintage Style

In postcards that is. Over Memorial Day weekend, Matt and I spent some time in Okoboji, Iowa at their various flea markets and antique shows/shops. We go antiquing quite frequently, but I've never really found any memorablia from my hometown, mostly due to the fact that Ossian is only home to 850 people.

Well in Okoboji I ended up purusing the booth of a woman with about a zillion postcards. She had the Iowa postcards separated by town and to my surprise found not only one, but three postcards from Ossian.

I guessing the top one was a stock "Good Luck" postcard, with the gold painted on later for which ever town wanted them.

The middle postcard has a house that looks very familiar, but has no clues as to its location. The writer indicates "I suppose you know this house without me telling you." Too bad you didn't tell me. I think it is a house on E Broadway, near the railroad tracks, but I'm not certain.

The colored house at the bottom I think is actually now on what is known as Becker Ave. The house still stands there and is home to some former neighbors. They worked on restoring the house and they might have even had a copy of this postcard, as the paint scheme is very similar to what it is painted now.

Any Ossianites out there recognize these homes? Do they still stand? Am I correct in their location?

Letterpress Set-up

When I describe my interest in letterpress, many people have lots of questions and can't really visualize the process. Today I finished up printing some new business cards and thought it would be a good opportunity to "show off" my set-up.

For my business cards, I started out designing in InDesign. Once finished, a pdf is sent off to get a letterpress cut. These cuts are made of magnesium and are reflected so they print correctly.

Mixing the ink color comes next. For my business cards, a dark orange was appropriate. This is where my background in painting comes in handy to mix up the right color. I use a Nolan Proof Press, so I hand ink every pass of the press. After inking the cut, I place the stock on the cut, apply the packing, and pull the roller across the cut. And then I repeat and repeat.

Since each piece is hand inked and pulled, one consideration to keep in mind is registration. Each color on a piece has to go through the press a separate time. In addition, the paper has to be registered properly to ensure proper placement.

There are many ways to handle registration, but thus far I've been using masking tape to eyeball the placement. Thus far it has been working fairly well, but tight registration does pose a problem with my masking tape system. I hope to look into a better registration system as I get into more complicated designs, but for now it works.

There's a short overview of letterpress. Hope you all enjoy :) Back to making more prints!

Where as all the time gone????

Obviously I've been a little pre-occupied to post any time recently...........here's a quick update of the past few months.......

I graduated in April with a degree in graphic design

ALT went to publication and was distrubuted throughout Des Moines

Matt and I went to the Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans.

I'm still working with Main Street Iowa, but looking for full time graphic design work

I joined the Prairie Book Collaborative

And I've been busy busy busy preparing for the Des Moines Art Festival coming up here near the end of June.

Today I took the day off to work on some printing and such----found it kind of ironic that my finger nail polish looked all nice just to get covered in black ink :) But I like it none-the-less.