More Motel Sign Printing

I had this two color motel sign linocut partially finished for about a month. I finally had some time to do it this week and I am excited about how it is coming out so far. Here are a few pictures of the work in progress. The block on the press is the first color I printed, and the uncolored block shows the black outline that I'll print next. So far so good! Hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year!

Holiday Card

I've been working on some holiday cards for myself and also for the last craft night I'll be going to. I love chartreuse so I couldn't resist this paper from Paper Source, but it turned out to be more difficult than I thought to come up with design and colors that worked on the paper. This is the final result, along with some of the linoleum blocks I used in the process. The card is now available on my Etsy shop too!

Holiday Gift Guide

Fluffy Flowers was nice enough to include me in her Holiday Gift Guide. This is a wonderful list of Etsy shops she has bought from throughout the year. A great resource if you are going to buy handmade for the holidays this year! Thank you!

First Craft Show

I participated in my first craft show this weekend -- the Indie Craft Experience Holiday Spectacular in Atlanta. It was a great time and went better than I would have thought. Having never done a craft show before, I really didn't know what to expect how or my work would be received. I got a lot of positive feedback, and found that the journals I have been printing on were the biggest hit of all.

I didn't have a lot of time to take pictures, as I was alone for part of the day and busy for most of it -- lots of people around -- but I have some of the event space, which is a very cool artists space made from an old industrial building, and my setup. I think I need to get some shelving for my displays next time, but this worked well for the first time.

Here is a second picture of the setup, notice the fine hand-painted sign! My husband does hand painted signs among lots of other things like pinstriping and airbrush work in the larger Papa Studios enterprise.



Here's the space, and a shot of the overall table:








I wanted to do more "reporting" and talk about some people I met during the show but I was kind of overwhelmed with talking to people and manning the booth. Next show I hope to do more!

Business Cards & Postcards

Here is a business card I just finished for myself in preparation for next week's craft show. The text was printed using a polymer plate, and the men are from some vintage letterpress items I picked up on eBay. No idea who the men are except that they came from Minnesota, and there were at least fifty of them! I've found it to be a challenge when I have been printing linocuts, and then I switch to printing with the polymer plates or the halftone plates like these. When I print linocuts I am trying to get as much ink as possible on those wide surfaces, and then I have to concentrate on getting just the right amount with the polymer or halftone plates.

Speaking of the contrast between polymer plates and linocuts, I also finished a promotional postcard for the show based on my earlier "resolve" design. Here it is:

Indie Craft Experience Holiday Shopping Spectacular

I will be selling at my first craft fair, the Indie Craft Experience Holiday Shopping Spectacular in Atlanta this year. I went to this event last year as a shopper and was very impressed with the great mix of vendors they had. Come check out this event and support craft in Atlanta!

Resolve

As promised, here are some pictures of my latest print. It's a linocut on soft non-mounted linoleum that I printed by hand. I wanted to try another tattoo art piece to see if it could also be translated into a print. This is currently printed on two different notebooks and is available in my Etsy shop.

Goofy Golf

I will have some new prints to post tomorrow, but in the meantime I leave you with some images from a vacation I took last week to Florida. This is a Goofy Golf Course in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. We played both courses and this was one of the highlights of the week! Way better than the modern mini golf courses with fake volcanoes, mountains, and no personality.

Georgia Street Team Online Trunk Show

My Etsy shop is participating in the Georgia Street Team Online Trunk Show from October 12-15th. Make a purchase from the shop and receive a free note card.



Also check out all the other participating shops in the Georgia Street Team for other great deals.

Out of Town

I have not been printing as much, due to some day job travel and some studio travel to a motorcycle rally to work. After the rally we stayed at this motel in Panama City Beach. It was was pretty seedy on the inside, but the view from its porch was amazing, and more than made up for the interior flaws! Apparently the owners have this huge block of land including the motel that they want to put a huge condo complex on. However, the city won't approve the condos because the land has a bunch of public beach access right of ways. I'm sure this will be gone soon but it is a nice reminder of the way Florida used to be!






Hopefully I will be back to some printing soon, and will make it to my first craft show in late fall!

Have you ever ridden an alpine slide?

I had not until a few weeks ago when I rode the one in Gatlinburg, TN. It was so much fun and it inspired me to start a set of prints based on the attractions in Gatlinburg. The first one is of course the alpine slide:







We now want to seek out and ride all the alpine slides left in existence! Kind of like the people that visit all the major league baseball parks I guess...

Aloha Monkey

I did this print just for fun, but it turned out so good that I went ahead and put in on Etsy! This is based on a great old piece of tattoo flash. I included a look at both the print and the linoleum block. Aloha!

Another Motel Print

Here is the next print I attempted in the series of motel prints I just started. I again printed on brown and white card stock -- and I still like the white version better. I could have done better with the use of negative space I think in this one, but it was more difficult than the first motel print to pick the right elements to transfer from a photograph.

Motel Sign Print

I just finished a new two-color print that I will be sending to the Print Exchange Five, an exchange I was invited to on printmakers.info.

I did two versions, one on glossy white card stock and one on rough cardboard-y card stock. At first I liked the one on the brown cardboard better, but the white one grew on me so I have decided to send that one out. Here they are:






I am very happy about these prints, because I have tried several times to make prints from my motel sign photographs with little success. In the past I was trying to get too much detail into the prints. This time I concentrated on stripping out a lot of detail and including very bold outlines, which seemed to work a lot better. I had so much fun with this one I am going to attempt a series!

some old pictures from Rogersville, Tennessee

Back in May we worked at a car show in Rogersville, Tennessee. I had been meaning to post some pictures of this but I forgot about them. The car show is a benefit for local charities, and each year is held on the land of a man who has recreated a small town from the fifties on his property. He has a Texaco gas station, a car dealership with an original curved class window, a railroad car style diner, a metal Sears house (I think it is Sears, anyway) and lots and lots of vintage antiques to furnish them. And the buildings are not just reproductions -- he has purchased the actual buildings and has had them moved to his property. It really is like a museum -- he should open for business and charge admission.

My camera ran out of batteries partway through, but here is a sample of some of the sights:

Blast Off print completed

Here's the completed print from an earlier sketch I posted. This was one of my most successful three color prints. I am encouraged to start doing more of them -- that third color can make a big difference!

diy:mia TEAR/OFF art show

Through some photos I had posted on flickr I got invited to participate in this street art and DIY art show in Miami called TEAR/OFF. You can get more details and see the artwork being submitted on their flickr group
www.flickr.com/groups/diymia. I submitted these older prints:








The show will be up at Miami International University’s Main Gallery from July 19th through August 24th.

Atlanta Etsy Treasury

Thought I would mention that a member of the Georgia Etsy Street Team has created a Treasury of Etsy items from Atlanta.

Blast Off!

Haven't posted much lately, thought I would show something I'm working on for my next print. This one will be a three color linocut. I think I may enter it in a print exchange I've signed up for, and also print it on some journals.

custom order completed!

Here's a picture of the completed custom sketchbook/notebook order I've been working on for a while! I think this was a really unique commission, and I'm really happy with how the turned out.

Have a happy 4th!

Vandercook Party!

You have to visit this post from the Vanderblog of some employee photos from Vandercook & Sons, makers of these fine presses. The photos were posted courtesy of Fritz Klinke/NA Graphics.

I want to know what the woman with the according was doing at the party!

more custom order details & progress

Here is a picture of the first color I've printed for the custom sketchbook order I'm working on. Next will be the light blue color. As I said in my last post, its a two color print made from linoleum blocks. I can't wait for them to be finished!

custom order details!

After some trials and tribulations, the commission I've been working on is finally proceeding! It's a limited edition hand-printed run of 50 signed and numbered sketchbooks. It's a two color print done solely on linoleum blocks. The sketchbooks have been ordered and should be here next week.

Here's a closer look at the sample I produced and more details:

Plaid Sketchbooks Move Forward

Bird card linocut on the vandercook -- printing brown

Thought I would post a little about my press. It's a Vandercook SP15 and this is a picture of the bird card I've been working on. Here the press is inked up in brown and I'm ready to print from the linocuts I completed last week:

And here is the second color being printed. Just a small block for the bird, the wire the bird is sitting on will remain the color of the card:

I'll post a picture of the completed card tomorrow!

custom order, no time to post

I've been working on both a custom order and a website recently (two separate new customers), so I haven't had much time to post lately. I thought instead I'd post a picture of one of my favorite motels. This was taken back in 2001 when my husband and I took a month off to take a road trip around the US. We covered over 8000 miles, and went from Massachusetts to Tennessee, out to Arizona, up California to Seattle, then east through Colorado and the midwest, and finally back to Massachusetts. This picture was taken in Kingman, AZ on Route 66. This is the motel that Timothy McVeigh stayed at the night before he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. We did not know it at the time we took the picture.

periodic table print project -- cadmium completed!

I've finally completed my cadmium print for the Periodic Table Print Project. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I printed on both heavy white paper and this brown card stock, but I think the brown color is better. The white paper I used had too rough of a texture and it grayed out the black a little too much for me. If you are interested in seeing the progress of this project, check out the flikr group for this project.