Spring time...

This weekend Jon has been busy printing another little letterpress print on the Adana. This one has a nice old block from an advert or catalogue with some rings (priced in shillings, so it must be old....).

The quote is most famous for being in 'As You Like It', although the song probably predates Shakespeare (click on the picture to enlarge it if you need to).

Although this print is all about the joys of spring, it's definitely feeling autumnal here, the first conkers have fallen off the horse chestnut, the nights are drawing in and we've been foraging in the hedgerows. In our part of Norfolk the elderberries are ready, but the sloes aren't quite there yet - another week and we'll have to return to our top-secret favourite sloe picking hedgerow...

Weddings and Tigers

A new letterpress print about weddings and tigers -

Printed on the Adana using our nice old wedding block and some Bodoni italic.

This one is in our Etsy and Folksy shops now...

We didn't dress up as tigers the day after our own wedding (or go to the seaside), although I suspect it would have been more fun if we had!

We're looking forward to the bank holiday weekend so we can both make a start on some new prints, and start planning a new and exciting project - more news soon!

Treasury

It's always nice to find ourselves featured in a treasury on Etsy -


This one features lots of other fabulous Etsy printmakers, so do go and have a look!

Today we're finishing off a little print that Jon has been working on this week, we just need to add some letterpress text...

A prototype

This weekend we made some British Birds cards as a special commission for someone - at the moment we don't do cards of any of our bigger prints, but we rather like these ones.

Then we made some new packaging as a prototype, we've been meaning to redesign our card packaging for ages - something nicer than the usual plastic bag...

We designed an envelope template over a cup of tea, and started cutting out a prototype in thick grey card -The envelope has a clear film window in the front to see the cards through (attached here with double sided tape) -
Here's the finished envelope complete with cards inside -
This batch of cards will be winging its way to a new home soon, but now we're debating whether we should do some more and pop them in our shops. What do you think?

We've just polished off rather large slices of lemon drizzle cake, complete with homemade lemon curd and mascarpone filling, the recipe is here - definitely worth the effort!

Wool (2)

This weekend we printed the second layer of ink on our wool ball linocut for a business card commission - a layer of light grey ink over the pink layer to pick out the details of the strands of wool.

The next stage is to letterpress the text into the empty space, which will call for some patience and careful printing on the Adana.

On Sunday evening we spotted two hot air balloons drifting over the house. We often see them in the distance floating over Norwich (they take off from up near the university), but only rarely do they come over the house. Jon grabbed a camera and took some photos before they disappeared into the distance - they go quite quickly!

One day maybe we'll go up, up, up and away!

Chatsworth

It seems like ages ago that we had a fun day out at Chatsworth when we went on holiday to Derbyshire, and ever since Jon has been planning this wood engraving.

And now it's finished!

Here's the nearly finished block, with just the sky left to do -


And the finished block all ready to print -


Here it is all inked up and ready to go!


Prints are available in our Etsy and Folksy shops now.

We have had a busy few days of printing and an exciting London trip - I spent quite a lot of money in here (photos of purchases to follow....)