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....)

Poppies and castles

On Sunday it was another sunny, hot day so we headed off early in the morning for a walk and then a picnic at Baconsthorpe Castle, near Holt in Norfolk. It was built in the 15th century, and was more like a country house than a castle, and the ruins are a lovely spot for an afternoon in the sunshine. We spread out our picnic blanket next to the moat and watched the ducklings gliding around.

Even though it was a glorious Sunday afternoon, there were only a couple of other people there, and we didn't see a soul on the five mile walk we did beforehand - where does everyone in Norfolk go when it's sunny? To the seaside I suppose!

Jon has printed his new engraving of a poppy head - it's on thick, Somerset paper, which was lovely to print on.

Theres one in the Folksy shop now.

We both have ideas for new prints to start this week - the inevitable water tower for me, and another engraving for Jon...

New projects

Last weekend was the final weekend of Norfolk Open Studios - thanks to everyone who came along this weekend. We have really enjoyed the experience, and we've met so many lovely people!

We both started new projects over the weekend. Jon engraved a small block with a close-up of a poppy head in a walled garden -

We are going to print it one evening this week.

I letterpressed lots and lots of little coloured covers with some of our nice vintage blocks for sets of small notebooks. I've been sewing the notebooks together inbetween other jobs - very therapeutic.


This week we've been enjoying cherries and peonies (and these strange pink spiky flowers) from the market in Norwich. The cherries didn't last very long...


Just nudging into the corner of the photo of the flowers is our new little raku pebble by Norwich ceramicist Lucy Edwards. It just fits in the palm of my hand, and is lovely and tactile, and such pretty colours!
Also, thanks to everyone for taking part in our survey. We've had loads of responses, and I'm going to pick the winner of the giveaway later this evening :)

Charlton

The ink has finally dried on Jon's new print - a small wood engraving of the landscape of the South Downs.


In the Etsy and Folksy shops now.

It's snowing quite heavily here this evening - the tyre tracks in the road from earlier on are almost completely filled in again. I hope its still there when we wake up!

New prints

This weekend we both worked on new prints - a linocut for me, and a small engraving for Jon. It felt so nice to spend all weekend printing and cutting again after so many weekends being busy doing other things.

Here's a close up of my lino block - part of a much larger reduction print, I've printed three layers so far. There is one more layer to cut and print before it's finished.

Jon worked on a small wood engraving of the landscape near Charlton in Sussex (where we stayed on our honeymoon) with lots of fields and tiny hedgerows. Here is the block in various stages of completion...

Our new Emma Bridgewater Lapwing mug is in the background in the photo above. How could we resist?

The engraving is all printed, but the ink is drying very slowly so we'll upload a photo tomorrow.

Those tulips that I bought last week opened out into huge blowsy blooms!

Makes!

The new Makes section of Folksy has launched, and we are very excited to be one of the first 'makes' on the site.

Find out how we engraved and printed our little Edgefield print here... And have a look at the other splendid 'makes' from other Folksy sellers too!

Today we have made a rather large batch of teacakes using one of Dan Lepard's recipes, and we'll be spending the rest of the day toasting them on the fire and reading the papers!

Teacakes:
600g strong white flour
125ml warm water
5 tsp or 2 x 7g sachets of quick yeast
150ml milk
75g caster sugar
50g white chocolate or dripping
300g mixed dried fruit
25g golden syrup
3 eggs
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger

1. Mix the yeast with the water and a tablespoon of the flour. Set aside.

2. Heat the milk until it is almost boiling, then take it off the heat and add the sugar, syrup, white chocolate/dripping and the fruit.

3. Beat the eggs and add to the yeast mixture.

4. Sift the flour and spices into a large bowl and then add the milk and yeast mixes. Beat together until it is all thoroughly mixed.

5. Cover the bowl and leave in a warm place for an hour or until the dough has doubled in size. You can knead it if you fancy but we've found it makes no difference to the final buns.

6. Divide the mixture into 14 teacakes. Shape them by stretching the dough and tucking it in underneath itself so you get a neat round ball of dough.

7. Place the teacakes on baking trays covered with baking parchment.

8. Leave in a warm place for 1hr 30 mins. Preheat the oven to 200C.

9. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden on top but still slightly soft.

10. Eat far too many of them, split, toasted and slathered in butter. Yum.

Woodman's Whippet Ale

Woodman's Whippet Ale, originally uploaded by deaconswood.

Goodness, it's been over a month since our last post - how remiss of us!

In our last post we mentioned a little surprise letterpress project we were working on - here are the results! We printed a set of beer bottle labels for our brother-in-law, James, for his birthday. Jon did a small wood engraving of a whippet for the central image, and we used Plantin 24pt for the text.



Here is the block (a 4x5cm maple block) and the type set up in the chase ready for printing.



We are both working on ideas for two large landscape relief prints at the moment, but its slow progress as this is such a busy time of year for us - we will post more details soon!

Stuff we like to print with #4

The fourth part in our erratic series of favourites. Today, some lovely end-grain wood blocks.

We have lots of blocks waiting to be engraved, in all shapes and sizes. Below is a random assortment of tiny blocks, never measuring more than 2 x 3 inches.


We also like to engrave on Resingrave, a synthetic material designed to imitate boxwood. I love the pristine white top layer before a block is engraved - always completely smooth and cool to the touch.


Next, a maple block. This one measures 3 x 5 inches, and is made up of several smaller blocks joined together.


Below is one of our precious boxwood blocks, from Chris Daunt, one of the last suppliers of handmade wood engraving blocks in the UK. If you ever hold a boxwood block in your hands then you'll know why it is such a highly prized wood. Boxwood feels completely different from any other wood, and the blocks are utterly beautiful in their own right, without any additions from us!


Below is a close-up of the grain of the same boxwood block.

One day we might just be able to bring ourselves to scratch its surface...

Cutting

This weekend we have both been doing lots of cutting!

We both find cutting to be quite therapeutic, especially with a glass (or two) of sherry and a favourite CD in the background. After a couple of weeks of day-job related upheaval we both needed to sit down quietly and do some cutting!

I have been working on a new wood block of a wooden peg which is now ready to print. I used one of my new tools, which was very pleasing to use and puts my old blunt ones to shame.

Here I am concentrating very hard on not cutting myself -


Jon has been busily engraving for a commission for a surprise present, so instead of a photo of his current block here is a photo of his magnifying glass. Useful for engraving and setting fire to small bits of paper when the sun is in the right place.

Finishing touches and a prototype

After letting the block sit on a shelf for a long time Jon has been busy adding some finishing touches to his wood engraving of St Winifred's Well (the Landmark Trust property that we stayed at in May), after a test print or two showed up some areas that needed more cutting.

We're going to print the newly cut block tonight on the press...

I have been busy making prototype wedding invitation cards using thin card and a square of thinner block printed paper. It took a couple of cards to get the folds quite right, but I'm really pleased with how they've turned out.

The final invitations are going to have a different patterned paper on them, and letterpressed text inside. Fingers crossed, they'll be ready to go out to our very small number guests at the end of next week... Hooray!

Bookplates

Its been quite a while since we last posted here, partly because the main project we were working on (an engraving for a bookplate) had to be kept secret until this weekend as it was a surprise wedding present! And partly because its spring and we've been out frolicking.

The design for the bookplate was engraved on 'new' formula resingrave which is meant to be less prone to chipping than the old one, though we weren't sure it was that noticeable a difference... The lettering was a new challenge and required lots of painstaking drawing of guidelines and double-checking in a mirror to make sure nothing had gone too awry.

The picture at the top is a view of the cathedral across the rooftops of Ely, and those of you who know it might spot that the tower and the lantern have been squashed together to make them fit in the space! This was the biggest edition we've ever tackled in one go, 50 copies in total, all on Zerkall paper.




















We're currently planning our contributions to the Periodic Table of Elements printmaking project, which aims to recreate the entire periodic table using a unique 6x6in print to represent each element. Loads of printmakers are involved and it'll be intriguing to see how it develops! We've been allocated selenium (Jon) and Neodymium (Sarah) and, armed with a few scraps of information courtesy of Google, we're already thrashing out some design ideas. As usual, watch this space!

Currently listening to: Gruff Rhys, Candylion, after seeing his wonderfully mad live show at the Arts Centre last week.

Reeds and Waves

Another weekend, another tiny woodblock engraved. This time a slightly less fiddly design than the Edgefield print, loosely based on many bracing walks by the sea in various parts of Norfolk, Devon and Cornwall. Its nowhere in particular, but there are elements of Cromer, Wells, St Ives, Penzance and even Plymouth in there somewhere! Again only 5 x 3cm. Will need to invest in a good magnifier if this keeps up...


Also finished is Fen Reeds, inspired by our post Christmas walk on Wicken Fen (or at least near Wicken Fen, what with us forgetting our NT cards and not being able to get in to the posh bit).


Our main website is due an overhaul to add all the new prints and generally tart things up a little, so do keep your eyes peeled for that over the coming weeks!

Currently listening to: The Shins - Wincing the Night Away

A smaller block

Spent the weekend finishing off a tiny engraving on an offcut of unidentified end-grain wood, possibly maple, part of the mixed bag we bought a few weeks ago. It felt strange to be engraving on wood at first, after weeks of plastic and resingrave, but it was nice not to have to worry about the surface chipping or lifting away!


The engraving was based on a sketch of fields around Edgefield, near Holt in north Norfolk, from a long walk we had last summer on the Holt-Mannington trail. The simple patterns of hedges and plough furrows suited the small area of the block (about 5 x 3 cm). Printing was a bit hit and miss at first and we tried lots of different methods: laying the block on the paper (with padding underneath) and pressing down with weights, laying the paper on the block and burnishing by hand, and a combination of the two, although this generally meant the block would shift and blur the print as we flipped them. We spent large parts of Sunday night looking longingly at presses on the internet!


While I was engraving on Saturday afternoon Sarah took it upon herself to create a neater way for me to store my tools, which since I've bought them have lived variously in a roll of bubble wrap, in an old Stilton and Port tin, and scattered across the dining table. Now they have their very own little roll, courtesy of some old curtain fabric from Freecycle, and Sarah's 1950s sewing machine (a hefty lump of splendid engineering).

Paperback Penguin Prints

Since doing the Christmas card (see earlier posts) there have been a couple of small pieces of engraver's plastic lying around, and on Sunday we decided to make use of one of them and do a tiny print based on the classic Penguin paperback design. We have a growing collection of these and it seemed like a nice little project for a weekend afternoon.



By that evening it was engraved and we'd printed it up in orange (used by Penguin for fiction covers), followed the next morning by green (mystery and crime, see below). We then added a pink (travel and adventure) and a blue version (biography) to finish it off. You can see the finished print here on our Flickr page.



Currently listening to: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

Christmas time, resingrave and wine...

Merry Christmas! A busy one for us, flitting between Devon and Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. Much fun and good cheer had by all, though we never did get those rollerskates... We ventured out to Wicken Fen on Boxing Day for a tramp around in the mud which provided much food for thought. Watch this space for fen related prints.

Back in Norwich now to enjoy a few last nights sat by the tree before it gets sawn up and thrown on the fire. New additions to the house include a pristine 1950s Singer sewing machine that's sure to be pressed into service soon, a Nikon EM to add to the camera arsenal and our first piece of boxwood courtesy of the incredibly fine craftsmanship of Chris Daunt.

It'll be a while before we're brave enough to make a mark on the boxwood, so in the meantime we'll stick with Resingrave. Our first bit of Resingrave has been put to good use, it was interesting to work with, holds fine lines quite well, though does chip if you attack it too vigorously with the large scorpers. The house design I chose was for a present and is coming along nicely. We pulled some test prints on Christmas Eve, using a mixture of Speedball acrylic inks as we'd run out of black, save for some thick oil based stuff which wouldn't have dried until somewhere next February.


Currently listening to: Low, Christmas

The Printing of the Cards

Sunday was christmas card printing day, having finished engraving the block (see below) on Saturday evening. It was our first time printing from engraving plastic and we learned quickly from our mistakes: 1, don't print with the ink too wet as it fills in all the fine lines; 2, Stay off the sherry. Don't drink and print kids, you know it makes sense.



Once we'd realised that allowing the ink to dry on the inking slab a bit before rolling it on the block was the way forward, things progressed very smoothly. Seeing as we don't have (and can't yet afford) a press, everything is done by hand. In the case of the Christmas cards the block was inked, placed face down on the card, rolled over quickly with a rolling pin, then flipped over and burnished with the back of a teaspoon. Crude, but fairly effective. Using acrylic rather than oil based inks made cleaning up after each colour a lot quicker. Forty cards later and it was time for a rest.



We also started printing our Christmas gift tags, a scroll design cut from a small offcut of Japanese plywood:


All the cards were written and sent yesterday, and we've even been organised enough to start wrapping presents and writing tags. After a trip into the city yesterday, ostensibly for Christmas shopping, we managed to find our way to the art shop and buy our first block of Resingrave, so look out for updates on how that progresses... A busy week ahead, buying a christmas tree today, driving to Cambridgeshire this afternoon and getting a train to Devon tomorrow. Still, 'tis the season!

J and S

Currently listening to: The Decemberists, The Crane Wife