A local photographer come to me with the charge of creating packaging for his business. He hands out a lot of CD’s when he does photography for clients and wanted a unique solution for how they are protected and presented. We created a custom die-cut and printed chipboard with red on one side and gloss varnish on the other. the result was a nice tactile piece that he could be proud to give his clients.

I do enjoy printing on a Vandercook proof press! Cylinder presses allow for uniform pressure across the entire surface of the print because you only have a small portion of the cylinder touching the form at one given time. On a platen press you dispurse all the impact pressure across the entire plate which reduces the overall impact pressure on a large form. The drawbacks of using a hand crank proof press of any kind is speed. You need to account for many more hours behind the press on large jobs because there is no way that you would be able to keep up with a motorized platen press even if it is hand fed. To put it in perspective, I can hand feed 1100 impression per hour on my Chandler & Price 10 x 15 platen press. To hand crank a Vandercook I can only pull between 200 – 250 with accuracy.

As I packed up samples I found a few things that I decided to take pictures of to show things that we have done in the past here at It’s Fancy. This is a custom baby announcement where the images tuck into a custom die-cut pocket with the announcement.

The great thing about die cuts is that they are reusable! This 1.5 inch circle was a great fit for my logo. I used some cast off paper from a previous project and ran a couple hundred of these. Printed one color on a 220# Lettra all cotton stock.

Series 1 Shift Knobs from Defiance Speed Shop

Cody Langford owner and resident artist/designer has been up to it again. This time he has sculpted, molded and cast in resin a series of 6 hot rod shift knobs for 2010. Drawing from different aspects of the hot rod culture he created this mix of monsters and tikis. Not completely satisfied with selling raw cast shift knobs Cody then teamed up with Jason Mattox of Timebomb Kustoms to get the paint just right. Jason, a well known artist, pinstriper and shift knob painter, worked his magic to come up with some wild color combination to make these shift knobs really pop. Again not satisfied with selling a shift knob Cody turned to his design and illustration skills and created packaging, certificates of authenticity and posters. He then pulled prints of each piece one color at a time using his antique letterpresses. The results, an incredible letterpress printed slip cover that wraps around the box the shift knobs will be sold in. Each box will contain a certificate of authenticity signed by both Cody Langford and Jason Mattox and will be numbered. Matching letterpress printed mini posters are also available as a separate item. The posters feature each shift knob and are printed from artwork hand cut from linoleum block by the artist.

Shift knobs are available to purchase individually or as a complete set from
www.defiancespeedshop.com. If you are lucky you will get one of these incredible pieces of art.

Available for purchase here: Series 1 Shift Knobs

Invitation and insert: Letterpress Printed 2/0 (Light Green + Brown) on chipboard.
Envelope: 2/0 with green on green and a brown overlay.

I had a great opportunity to work on wedding invitations for a friend and his bride recently. There were no real constraints but a request for something poster like. They has a few colors that they liked but left the major choice up to me. After I played with standard 5″ x 7″ formats and nothing seemed to flow like I wanted it to so I started looking at #10 policy envelopes that opened on the end. Once I switched the format everything just started flowing together nicely for this custom letterpress invitation package.

Why is it that the last person to get taken care of is always myself. I have been meaning to reprint my business cards for months now but every time I have a moments free time I fill it with someone else’s project? I always tell people not to run out of business cards, not because I want to get more business (well kind of), but because you don’t want people to forget how to contact you after you have a face to face meeting. that is why I have decided that no matter what is going on in my life in 2 weeks I will get my business cards reprinted!

Enter the magical world of letterpress printing. I love these old videos that show how things should be done on a letterpress if people actually used in a fashion they were originally created for. In a modern digital age we have adapted them to use photopolymer or metal plates and found that they can place a beautiful impression into thick buttery papers. While I still use lead and wood type regularly I an very picky about how much pressure I actually want impose on them. If I am going for a nice deep impression I use a polymer or metal plate. That way I don’t ruin the lard to find handset type lead and wood that I have collected.

I love my creative clients! Riley used a pocket die-cut that I have in my archives and incorporated it into this incredible wedding invitation package. By letting his 2 color design overlap they ended up with a beautiful 3 color invitation. The design and all artwork was illustrated by Riley. This is only one of his many talents. Riley Davis is also a skilled web designer and programmer. the Javascript, forms and all functional aspects of this current website are a product of his hard work! Kudos Riley for never ceasing to amaze. If you have a project that needs some extra awesome added to it you can find him at http://rileydavisonline.com

I had a incredible opportunity to print a wedding invitation designed by a bride from Spain. This invitation needed to be printed and shipped on a truncated timeline. It ended up being a 2 color 2 sided invitation with a blind deboss the front. We printed it on Lettra 110# Pearl White cover.