Greetings from 2012 - New Orleans

New Orleans is one of these magical places I've always wanted to visit - with the French-influenced architecture, phenomenal regional cuisine and of course the ever-present jazz.

The romantic ironwork balconies in the French Quarter called out to be rendered for our next city sketch.

Like taking a step into another century.

Our 2012 postcard calendar is now for sale in our Etsy shop. We will also it for sale at all of our holiday markets listed in the sidebar.

When the cat's away...

the Albertine mice were busy reprinting World Notes for our Letterpress Library. Here are stacks of printed and die cut boxes waiting to be folded.

2011 letterpress wall calendar

For sale on Etsy, and coming soon to a craft fair near you! They will start shipping after the Thanksgiving holiday. Gobble, gobble, everyone!

All of the inspiration was drawn (literally) from flowers in our neighborhood gardens. I've been meaning to do something with dozens of inspiration images for ages and finally figured out what! Much to the chagrin of my studio staff, as I redesigned the entire calendar only three weeks ago.

A detail of some birches.

When the year is up, cut off the month blocks for some frame-able prints or postcards!

Each calendar is drilled and bound with Angela's gorgeous Italian cotton ribbon, but you can try an alternate display as above. Every ink color was mixed with either silver or gold for a rich, dense coverage and extra shine. But just for that extra oomph, many of them were run through the press twice - over 9,000 cranks of the press all told.

Get yours before they're gone!

A view from the mixing table

Tuscan Kitchen

Last week we took on a set of invitations for the gala opening of a new Italian restaurant, Tuscan Kitchen, up in Salem, New Hampshire. We went for really making a visual impression with a copper ink on Somerset's rich velvet black cotton stock. It took three passes to make the ink pop the way we wanted, but it was worth it!

The invite was paired with a copper metallic envelope.

Here's wishing Amy and the whole Tuscan Kitchen crew great success!

A star-shaped 2011

I'm very excited to unveil the first of our 2011 time-trackers - the star accordion desk calendar! Printed in blue/gray on white or green/gray on sage with an argyle pattern, simply spin the calendar to watch the months go by.

The beauty of the construction is that it allows us to print the entire calendar in one sheet, then fold neatly into the star pattern for a fabulous desk accessory.

The calendars are now available for sale in our Etsy store, and at our holiday fairs throughout the season.

William Morris ketubah

Here's a detail from a five-color ketubah (marriage contract) we printed last week, honestly one of the most intricate and beautiful prints I've ever worked on. The line work was an original drawing done by the groom (a sculptor by trade) inspired by the floral patterns of William Morris (we used a version of these leaves in their invitations as well).  I set the typography (in three languages!) and colorized it for them to coordinate with their wedding palette.





The scrolls were called out in an opaque white ink on a Rives BFK tan paper (de-luscious) to make them pop, and the tan of the paper softened all of the colors just enough for a gorgeous fall scheme. Leaves were printed first in yellow and then an orange gradient on top. The plate for the gradients came out with a harder edge than I liked so I ended up wiping off some of the ink on the feathered edge of each leaf by hand before each print.

I love projects that challenge the letterpress process and this one was no exception. Congratulations Julie and Miguel and thanks for including us in your big day!

Publish Post

Ho-ho-holidays

Just a little peak at the new holiday box covers all neat and stacked after their die-cut-score run. We'll have a few hundred flying out the door tomorrow (all filled with cards, of course). Available soon at our Etsy store as well.

Behind the scenes: how ink is made

Miles of piles

At the end of August we shipped out a giant batch of our Bright Ideas journals to Anthropologie! All 17 boxes-worth marked the end of a month of non-stop journal production (I admit we have some streamlining to do before we take on this sort of project again...). Here are some of the pictures of the mountains of covers, innards and tags in production.

 

Printed covers, before the fold.

Covers folded, waiting for "guts" (we had to scrounge up every available box in the studio as temporary housing for the various steps in progress).

 

This is what 63,000 sheets of paper looks like (yes, all three boxes).

Here are a few hundred of them folded and ready to be stapled into their covers.

Our bird tags printed and all cut down. Now they just had to be hole-punched and tied to the completed sets. Believe it or not, I sat through many quiet hours at the Gift Fair punching holes (even as our buyers from Anthro came by to say hi) to keep things moving. It was the only reasonably portable step I could take out of the studio!

Look for your own set of Bright Ideas journals in stores now!

With never-ending thanks to Becka, Matt, Jesse, Daphne, Melissa, Danielle, Rachel and especially Bobsie and Daniela (our tireless interns) for making this happen!

He woke the beast!

Months after door reconstruction, press removals and deliveries, and much reorganization, Mr. Fezziwig (as the Heidelberg is affectionately known) is finally producing! In this case, the first batch of over 6,000 journal covers for an order heading out to stores nationwide this fall.

Huzzah! Way to go Matt and team Albertine!

Library in transit

 

Earlier this month, after weeks and weeks of printing, folding, die-cutting and stuffing, we started shipping out orders for the new Letterpress Library. We found just the right boxes so when stores receive them, they'll know exactly how great the Library looks all neat in a row! 

We've even heard back from one fabulous little shop that over half the order has already sold!

Know a store that should be carrying our goodies? We'll be at the NY International Gift Fair in two weeks as part of the New York's Newest exhibitors on Pier 92 - booth 300-11. Send 'em over!

Introducing...

 

In celebration of Earth Day, we at Albertine are delighted to announce our new Letterpress Library!

  

Our challenge: how do we create a sustainable yet eye-catching and unified presentation for our note card sets?

Our solution: the Letterpress Library. Each “volume” in the library contains one set of our award-winning decorative note cards. The design is a modern take on traditional bookcovers, kind of like us, using old-fashioned presses in a modern world. The library unifies our collection of notes and the covers are printed on 100% recycled stock eliminating the need for plastic and vinyl packaging. The note cards, as always, are letterpress printed by hand onto luxurious 100% cotton stock, one piece at a time on antique presses.

  

Plus we think they look pretty spiffy all in a row. 

Come and see them in person at the National Stationery Show this May: Booth 2142.

Looking ahead

A few weeks ago it was still summer. I suppose it still is, but now that September is here, Labor Day past, and a slight chilling of the air, it's a little easier to think about the colder months to come and the new year ahead.



Why all the "looking ahead?" Because it's calendar time. Yes, we're in the throws of printing our brand new 2010 hanging calendar, sans marbling this year.



Here's our giant pyramid of cut stock just waiting for the next run.



While I've included several of my favorite custom designs in the calendar, I'm even more excited to break out some brand new designs. There's a lot of play with echo-ed images.



This brush stroke nest is begining to inspire me to design a whole new line of cards.

Stay tuned!

Vandercook bundle, part 1

I'm working on a print for the Vandercook Centenary Bundle. It's overly-ambitious to be sure, and after a first good run, the second one isn't shaping up to be as precise as I'd hoped, so there may be some adjustments to the design (a ten-color edition of 125) to simplify it and keep it looking good.

Fingers crossed - and stay tuned over the next two weeks to see the emerging results.

Catching up

While the shop is still abuzz with new wedding work, settling into the new office, preparing for exciting things to come, I thought I'd finally upload a few images of work we've done recently.

There've been a spate of skylines lately, which makes me pretty happy. From the uber-simple cross-Atlantic sketch to a more detailed windy city, couples are embracing their hometowns and wedding locales to create unique save-the-date cards.







On the textured cotton paper, the sox look delightfully soft!



We've also worked with some local designers lately, who bring us these great works. I love the blue sparkles on this fourth of July save the date card.



The two-tone blue-tone flower is subtle and elegant.



With (hopefully) the worst of the winter behind us, here's a blast from this past season's invitations. We were able to find this perfect snowy vellum for the envelope lining and matching belly bands, and together with the blind embossed snowflake it creates a wintery wonderland of an invitation.





We're hard at work with designs for summer weddings now, and it's nice to think ahead to the warm lushness that awaits (and the longer days, too!).

Getting down to business

Lately much of our work had been for commercial clients - business cards, promotional pieces, hang tags. It's rewarding to form relationships with other small companies and be a part of their growth and success.



Earlier this year we printed some folders for Grazier Photography to house their cd and brochure for prospective couples. Last month, Matt (of the husband-wife team Matt & Enna) approached me about doing some matching envelopes to complete the set.



I adore the way the scrolls wrap around from the front to the back flap of the envelope, it's such a wonderful touch.



In fact, let me say another few words about Matt & Enna; their work is absolutely stunning. I was fortunate enough recently to be at the receiving end of a portrait session with Matt where my husband and I roamed from the Science Museum to the back streets of historic Boston, hunting down perfect backdrops for us. It was casual, fun and really let us be us. They pay just as much attention to each of their wedding couples, and Enna's baby portraits are too precious. For more of their images visit the Grazier Photo blog.



Speaking of babies, another young company, Toby + Rei, came to me in the spring for some hang tags for thier new line of organic children's wear. The original order was for 300 tags (at the time, printed on plantable seed paper), but it wasn't long before they were asking for 300 more. Only last week I shipped them this newest order for 1500 tags. You've come a long way baby! (by the way, their bamboo & cotton baby blankets are the softest, most delicious fabrics I've ever held - we'll definitely have one for our baby when the time comes).



Lastly, one of our favorite local(ish) stationery stores, Scribe Paper in Marblehead, just reordered some business cards. They opened shortly after we started fulltime here at Albertine Press, and it's been our great pleasure to grow alongside Grace, Colleen, Eric and their crew (now in two locations).

So thanks to Matt, Enna, Alanna, Kate, Grace and all of the other businesses out there who choose letterpress to really stand out, and for choosing us to make it happen.

Mini me

After nearly every run we have small piles of overprints and off-prints. What to do with these beautiful scraps?

Linda & Harriett in Brooklyn cuts theirs to create "Redesigned" flower pins and dress cards:



Night Owl Paper Goods makes their own flower cards out of misprints:


While many of ours become test sheets for future print runs, anything with images worth sharing we save in to cut into "minis".



Though one of our most popular products, we only sell "grab bag minis" at craft fairs. After cutting down all those glorious scraps into flat gift enclosure cards, we sort them into color piles and then make up little assortments of five different cards and envelopes, perfect for any gifting need.



What other re-purposing ideas are out there?