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!

Gardens and gift tags

It's been cold and foggy here for a couple of days, so we've been keeping warm inside planning what to plant in the garden this spring, and ordering some seeds. At the moment we've got spring greens and chard on the go, with purple sprouting broccoli to look forward to in a few weeks.

But the bulbs are coming up and the lilac is covered in buds so our thoughts are turning towards the spring and summer... This year we're going to branch out with some more interesting varieties that we haven't tried before, such as munchkin squashes, trombomcino courgettes, and golden beetroot. If only we had room for more!

Apart from planning the vegetable garden, we've been busy stamping out sweet little gift tags from some of the pile of printed bits of paper and card in our stash.


I think they look rather fetching with some natural raffia tied onto a present, but I think we'll use them as price labels too.

There's a pack of 10 in our Folksy shop.

A very therapeutic activity for a wintry afternoon!

Memorandum

We usually write notes to each other on bits of scrap paper, but we recently picked up this lovely little 'memorandum' block - the perfect excuse to letterpress some nice cards to write lists and notes on!

Although only special notes - they're too nice for something like 'Jon - remember to put the wheelie bin out!'.
On Sunday we printed loads in pretty blue, purple, a lovely sagey-green and our old favourite, hot pink! Tonight I'm going to sit and package them up ready to take to Clutter City on Saturday - the days seem to be slipping away and I still have a list of things that need to be done before then...

Right, we had better think about making a start on our tea - pumpkin tagine tonight!

Finished cards

We have finally finished printing the linocut Christmas cards we started a couple of weeks ago. We printed each one in red, green and gold, and it made us feel very Christmassy...

Especially when I dug out the Christmas tree lights to take some photos! I managed to resist the temptation to dig out the Christmas mugs and tea towels - its a bit early for that yet...

We've decided to letterpress some more Christmas cards using some of our teeny tiny holly blocks - that will be this weeks project, as well as pressing on with my flying ducks (which have been sitting on a shelf feeling lonely for a couple of weeks - I'm determined to finish them this month though!). Sets of Christmas cards are available on Folksy, Etsy and Dawanda now!

This afternoon we're going to make Chelsea buns and plant some last minute bulbs in the garden - we'll have to sweep up all the leaves first though!

Note!

We love this little vintage block - it's got a few little chunks missing but I think that adds to its charm once printed. I especially like the 'E' (and her little hat).

A short post today because I'm busy printing Christmas cards. The green is almost dry, so I had better make a start on the red - photos to come!