A Suffolk adventure

This weekend we ventured out of Norfolk down into deepest, darkest Suffolk...
We explored the very pretty village of Clare (where we took lots of photos with the Rollei on the windswept castle motte) and pottered about in Sudbury, including a good poke around in Gainsborough's House which has a very nice print studio. If only it wasn't an hour and an half drive from our house...We also went to visit Celia Hart's studio, which was open to visitors as part of the Cambridge Open Studios scheme. We love reading Celia's blog, purple podded peas, and it was lovely to have a good chat with another printmaker. We spent the long drive back to Norwich discussing all the prints we want to do in the next month or two.

Today we have been busy wrapping prints ready for the Clutter City market in Norwich next weekend (more on that another day), so expect lots of letterpress related posts this week as we get ready to stock our little stall!

A New Engraving (and some giftwrap)

For a long time I've been planning to do an engraving of St Giles Street in Norwich, one of our favourite places to go on a Saturday morning. Last summer I took photos of all the buildings down one side of Upper St Giles, and over the winter turned these into a pencil drawing. This then formed the basis for the wood engraving. Rather than try and find a very long and thin block I decided to engrave the street in two sections, one above the other. I used a 4 x 3 inch block, with each row of buildings just over an inch high. Here's a picture of the block in progress (the lines in the middle were to help get the buildings roughly to scale with each other).


When it was finished we printed it on the Adana 8x5, with mixed results! We did a few of the whole block, and then some using just one half with the other masked off. It was printed using Lawrence oil-based letterpress ink on Zerkall paper, and after about an hour of trial and error we eventually managed to start turning out decent prints. This was the first time we've used oil-based inks for ages. We always hated the cleaning up afterwards - too many nasty chemicals and black stains in the bath. We've found a good routine now though, using a small bottle of "Zest It" and a pile of old black socks to get the rollers, pallette knives and inking slab clean. Here's a print of the whole block. Prints in various combinations will be turning up soon on our Etsy, DaWanda and Folksy shops.

Sarah has been busy making hand printed wrapping paper, using one of old fabric printing blocks. One was printed in dark blue ink, and the other in dark red ink on large sheets of handmade Lotka paper from Nepal. She's really pleased with how they turned out, and the blue paper has already been used to wrap up presents! The red version is in the Etsy shop now.

Peas and artichokes

We have been out in the garden enjoying the sunshine this week, plotting new ideas for various prints and keeping a close eye on all our little vegetables. Today we harvested our first pea pod! Hooray! It was a Hurst Green Shaft, and it was delicious - why bother cooking fresh peas when you can just eat them straight out of the pod? Like green smarties, only better.

Inspired by all this vegetable growing I did a quick watercolour sketch of some artichokes yesterday (not grown by us, but bought from the local farm shop instead). We've been trying to decide what kind of print we could turn my little painting into - Jon thinks it would make a good wood engraving on one of our tiny little 2 inch blocks, and I think it would make a nice woodcut.

I think we might end up doing both!

A new photograph of an old print

This week I have been slowly re-scanning some of our prints and taking some nice new photographs of them to add to our Etsy listings. It's a slow process, and the only one I've done so far has been the green TLR camera print, which I think looks rather nice on top of our new bookshelf. The new improved listing is here, and more will follow in the next few days!

We had a jolly day out in London on Monday - Jon had a work meeting, and the office is right next to St James' Park, we followed the sound of the band up to Buckingham Palace and watched the Changing of the Guard (from behind a very large crowd of eager tourists).

Whilst I'm beavering away on jazzing up our Etsy shop Jon has been busy working on a new wood engraving. At the moment he's still sketching the design onto the block - more photos to follow before he starts cutting!

Busy Busy

We have had a busy couple of weeks, but sadly without much time for printmaking! We spent the last two weekends at my parents house enjoying the sunshine and their big garden. Our own is looking splendid and everything is romping away.

We did find time to set up our new shop on Dawanda - a European site for lovely handmade things (a bit like a European version of Etsy). We haven't got all our prints listed in the shop yet, but hopefully they should all be there by the end of the week. The site is priced in Euros, and during Euro 2008 you can get an 11% discount in participating shops (including ours!) - the discount is applied automatically but is only available whilst matches are being played.

We had a nice surprise this week when Jon's little Penguin print turned up on a cool crafty blog that I enjoy reading - thank you Lupin!

To make up for the lack of printmaking related photos, here is one of Hal falling asleep in the sunshine instead...

Cock-a-doodle-doo

This weekend I have finally managed to find the time to finish my cockerel print - carving out the final layer and then printing a lovely dark blue colour. Jon helped with the printing when he wasn't out in the garden, and we're both really pleased with how he has turned out. If only we could have a real one of our own! Maybe one day...

We don't have the space at home for a proper studio so all our printmaking activities take place on our dining room table (helpfully covered by a wipe-clean striped oilcloth). My favourite place to sit and carve is in the chair opposite the window, which gets the most sun. Everything gets moved to one sie of the table (or onto the floor) when its time to print, so we often end up having to eat our tea on our laps because the table is covered in wet prints and other printing paraphenalia.

We've interviewed a fellow printmaker, Ellen Shipley, for the Prinsty (Printmakers of Etsy) team blog - read it here.

It has been very hot and sunny here for the past couple of days, which has meant lots of time in the garden tidying up and planting things out. It's all looking lovely and tidy out there now. This is the first year that we have tried our hand at growing strawberries. These ones are in a hanging basket outside the back door, above the herbs. I've got all my fingers and toes crossed that they ripen!

A wet bank holiday weekend

Another wet bank holiday weekend here (although it was sunny yesterday, so Jon got lots done in the garden), so we have been stuck inside with nothing to do but carve woodblocks, print, eat toasted fruit loaf and drink plenty of tea.

I have been busy carving and printing the next layer of a square print of a cockerel. The background colour and the first layer of his feathers are all printed, so today I did some cutting before printing the next layer of feathers - a dark orangey-red. It is working out very well at the moment, but will probably take at least a couple more weekends work before I manage to finish it.

Jon is busy working this weekend, so hasn't had much time for art - but he is busy coming up with plenty of ideas for his entry for the 71st annual exhibition of the Society of Wood Engravers - the submission date for entries is in the first couple of weeks of July and both wood engravings and other types of relief print can be submitted.

Yesterday, when it was still sunny, Jon took a lovely photo of one of our home grown alliums. I only cut one to bring into the house but now I wish I'd cut them all as they have now taken a bit of a battering from the rain...