Busy, busy!

We have had a busy old week - engraving, printing and organising mostly. And a spot of letterpress too. Remember the Pemberley notecards we printed ages ago? I always meant to make them into a series, so here is the next one - a nice quote from Northanger Abbey with a vintage block.

'A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing
anything at all, should conceal it as well as she can.'

We're hoping to perhaps print these tonight so the ink will have plenty of time to dry before the weekend, then tomorrow we have Jon's new engraving to print.

Otherwise, we have been busy working! Here I am attempting to teach some students something useful at Wimpole Hall yesterday - they all seemed to enjoy themselves despite the downpours.

More books (and some bookplates too)

This weekend we are busy getting ready for the next Clutter City and H@ndmade Cambridge - Jon is working on a new engraving, and I've been letterpressing plenty of cards and notelets.


We've printed a batch of Penguin bookplates, and letterpressed 'Ex Libris' in black oil ink on the Adana.

We popped out into Norwich yesterday to buy some leather offcuts from Norwich Art Supplies and Anglian Fashion Fabrics to make some more hand stitched books... We picked up lots of lovely brown leather, and a really gorgeous piece of soft grey suede.

We've got plenty more to keep us busy over the next couple of weeks, including new prints!

Handmade Books

Last Saturday we went on a brilliant course run by a local bookbinder, Judith Ellis. We learnt a technique called 'longstitch' binding, which doesn't require any glue.

In the morning we used pink and green PVC covers to get the hang of things -

But in the afternoon we were let loose on a selection of lovely leather covers, and marbled papers....
Jon used dark brown leather with a light blue marbled paper inside, and I used red leather with a matching red marbled paper.

We're really excited about experimenting with this technique - somehow printmaking, letterpress and bookbinding seem to be happy bedfellows. Hopefully we can remember enough from the course to make another one each this coming weekend...

There are lots more examples of this type of binding on Flickr.

A relaxing weekend

We have had a very relaxing weekend in the Fens, playing with dachshunds and whippets and eating yummy little cupcakes.

Since getting back we've realised that it isn't many weeks until we're at H@ndmade Cambridge - it's on Saturday April 4th. We've got plenty of printing and letterpressing to do before then, so we've drawn up a long to-do list and we're going to spend the next few weeks gradually crossing things off.


You can read a little interview with us on the H@ndmade blog, and find out about all the other lovely people who will be there too.

It's also not long before Open Studios - this will be the first year we've taken part, so we are very excited but quite nervous too! More details to follow soon...

We had a load of peppers lurking in the back of the fridge, so this morning I roasted them up and stuffed them in a jar along with plenty of olive oil, garlic, chilli and balsamic vinegar. I don't think they'll last very long though!

All I want....

....is a nice cup of tea and a sit down.

I say this at least once a day, every day. So here is that immortal phrase as a lino cut, complete with a steaming cup of tea and a cosy chair to snuggle up in.

Here is it in various stages of production - cutting out the light blue teacup to leave a thin dark blue outline...

Inking the final layer of lettering with dark orange ink -

And about to lift the print off the block after a little burnishing.

Hopefully having a copy on the wall means that I'll just be able to point to it, and Jon will know to go and put the kettle on.

In our Etsy and Folksy shops now.

This weekend we did a little bit of tidying up in the garden and planted these primroses in the pots on our front windowsill. We also got this years batch of chilli seeds on the go - hopefully they'll do better this year than last year!

We've also signed up for Twitter, so if you want to go what we're getting up inbetween blog posts then come and follow us there! Here is our profile.

We're off to make some drop scones for afternoon tea now, and light the fire for a cosy Sunday afternoon.

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!