This week has been light in the sleep department, but for mostly good reasons.  I had a flurry of printing activity this week as I scrambled to get cd sleeves printed up for Pete Witham & the Cozmik Zombies’ cd release party for their new record, Full Tilt.  This was my first experience printing cd sleeves and I really enjoyed the process.  I hope more music related printing is in my future.  As always, the end result was a combination of foresight, happy accidents, physical and time constraints.  But I’m pretty pleased with them.  My last push on Wednesday night to print the back cover was made possible by the following: a bowl of moosemeat stew, a couple slices of bread & butter, one can of Barq’s root beer, half a brownie, encouragement from J, and lots of fabulous tunes that J cranked in the studio.  Cheers!

I have been able to spend more time in the studio the last couple weeks (thanks to my part-time status in the summer) and it’s been invigorating.  J wanted some postcard sized business cards printed so I got down to business.  I chose Kabel for the typeface primarily because I had it in a variety of sizes and light and bold.  And I had a linoleum carving of a chicken that I did a few years ago that seemed to work well for his business — The Chicken Barn Recording Studio.  The text was all printed in black and then I mixed a bright red with brown to get a brick red for the chicken. 

He also wants some similar cards for another business so I drove up to Rock, Paper, Scissors in Wiscasset this afternoon and as always found exactly what I wanted.  The shop owner had lots of chipboard kicking around so I got a nice big stack that we’ll cut up to use for the rustic looking cards.

I also revamped my inspiration board.  The contents had been up for far too long.  Here’s the update:

Hopefully I’ll have lots more to share in the coming days and weeks.
Have a great weekend!

I have yet to post anything about it, but I participated in a letterpress print exchange a couple months ago.  I made about 50 prints and sent them off and patiently waited until a couple weeks ago when I received the batch of prints in the mail (thanks to Kelly of Paper Stories for all her work organizing and executing this exchange).  What a treat!  Everything was fantastic and the swap contained very diverse styles.

For my print I used wood type to spell out TOOLS and then I carved a linoleum block with a spade, saw, pitchfork and hammer.

Now there is a giveaway being done on Poppytalk so if you’re interested in winning some fabulous letterpress prints, head on over and follow the instructions.

The vernal equinox has passed and we are now almost one full week into spring.  That is not to say that temperatures shot up over night, but there are signs all around of spring’s arrival.  I saw crocuses forging upward paths, determined to greet the world, patches of green peeking through the snow in the woods, and vibrant blue skies decorated with billowy, cotton-ball clouds.  And our landlord at the studio is putting his tomatoes in the barn’s greenhouse this week, a sure declaration of spring, but also a marker of our one-year anniversary in the studio space.  Thus far celebration has come in the form of a near constant stream of activity in the space.  J has been recording a variety of bands lately and I have made it up there to print regularly the last couple weeks.  There’s nothing like a deadline to make the flywheel turn!

I finished up wedding invitations (envelopes and reply postcards included) for a cousin pretty recently and then I began brainstorming and carving a design for a letterpress print exchange that I signed up for, organized by Kelly of Paper Stories.  My prints went out on the tardy side, but I was pleased with how they turned out.  I’m holding off on posting pictures until the swap is finished.  I think that this exchange was exactly what I needed to jolt me back into a world in which I enjoy printing and its whole process.  Printing wedding invitations can be rather draining and end up feeling too much like a chore, though I learn new things throughout the {sometimes arduous} process.

Spring does tend to be a refreshing time, the world seeming ripe with opportunity, the warmer weather waking up parts of ourselves that can become frozen during the long winter.  I am uncertain about my gardening opportunity this summer, but regardless of what happens fresh, local produce will be headed my way every week since I signed up for a CSA in Bowdoinham.  I was excited but a bit reluctant worrying that food will go to waste, but I am determined to use each week’s provisions and I suspect that Serving Up the Harvest, a cookbook I bought last year will come in handy.  The sequence of recipes follows the readiness of crops through the season which I find rather handy.  Anyhow, unless the CSA is full, we’ll be getting a weekly supply of fresh produce from Life Force Farm May through October.

Changing topics yet again, I went for a lovely late afternoon walk at Wolfe’s Neck State Park last weekend, awhile after the short-lived snow squall that spit big, wet snowflakes on my windshield.  I packed myself some leftover soup my mom made, along with a few thick slices of homemade bread and headed out.  It was chilly but invigorating and I was able to eat my provisions while relaxing on a large rock a few feet from the water as the sun shone and the patterns and colors all around me left me filled with wonder.  It’s amazing what an hour in the great outdoors with plentiful fresh air will do for the mind, body, and soul.  As I walked I considered myself an explorer, mulling over the first half of How to Be an Explorer of the World, which I gifted myself last week.  There is so much to enjoy in this book.  Inspiration is visual and cerebral as Keri Smith packs interesting and insightful quotations into the pages of this book.  I’ll be sure to share some of my favorite spreads in a later post.

Here are photos from my weekend adventures:

p.s.  J has become a regular at Town Landing, the local diner near our studio, and this seems to translate into special treatment now.  He ordered a short-stack of pancakes Sunday morning and they were served like this: