Moody moody

I don't think I've ever made a mood board before, but collages are fun. After putting together this little spread of things we've printed, things that inspire and other ephemera, I decided it still wasn't quite done. So I added some drawing. And Sadie added her hand.

For the love of marble

We are incredibly pleased to present the 2009 Albertine Press hand-marbled, letterpress-printed, limited-edition desk calendar. Last year's marbled calendar was so positively received (we had many requests for this year's months in advance) that we dug in and designed another.

Each page of the desk calendar (handily displayed in its clear jewel case) is a marbled original, meaning no two calendars are alike. After all of the marbling, we then letterpressed the date blocks onto the pages for a simple, elegant desk reference.



In paper marbling, paints are dripped, spattered and sprayed onto the surface of a tray of seaweed-thickened water (to keep the pigments afloat) and then drawn through with various tools to achieve particular patterns. When the desired pattern is reached a sheet of pre-treated paper is carefully laid down across the surface of the tray, thereby transferring the image. Then the process is started all over again.



As many of you know by now, letterpress prints are hand cranked through one of our antique presses, one at a time. A raised image is inked on its surface and literally pressed into the paper, achieving that impression we have come to know and love. After the treating, marbling, cutting, printing, checking, trimming and final assembly, we've lovingly handled each sheet of each calendar six or seven times.



This year we changed papers, opting for a recycled Mr. French pop tone sheet, in a variety of different colors. The final numbered edition is only 75 calendars, which are available online in our Etsy shop or directly from us at one of our holiday craft fairs.



May they all find good homes!

Once more with feeling

Calendar pre-orders have shipped, the rest await ribbon-tying. I can't stand how much I love the front covers. I think I could mosaic an entire wall of the studio with these covers.

Go with the flow

Over an entire month of nearly full-time marbling, and it is done. The paints are packed up, the drying lines tied back up to the ceiling, the trays cleaned & dried and only one giant purple stain on the floor. Back to the presses for the rest of November.



The last month that I tackled was June, which was an incredibly fun and gratifying design to repeat all day long - vibrant, dancing, and simply joyous to look at after each step



Stripes of color, with a tight, vertical getgel pulling the colors into each other.



Then a second horizontal getgel.



Finished June!

You're so Vein

A most happy accident / experiment today led to the cover for the calendar. It was also the first day of printing, mostly samples to adjust ink colors and alignments, but it's incredibly exciting to see everything coming together.



Although I intend to have bound calendars on sale at our Etsy shop in two weeks (fingers crossed), I was rushing to get finished photographs taken to submit to Decor8 for Holly's annual calendar roundup.



It was so hard to decide which months to feature (clockwise from top left: august, cover, january, december, october, may), but in the end I'm really pleased with this spread.

Coming soon to an Etsy near you.

Eight down, four to go

Five, if you count the cover, which you should.

Today was July, and this photo doesn't do it justice (stupid fluorescent lights), but imagine red and orange sunshine-y swirls blazing above a turbulent sea. That's what I was imagining, anyhow.



And for September a muted green malachite with hints of blue and orange-brown - autumn tease.



Tomorrow is August so it'll be blistering sunshine all day long in the studio (good thing I did the cold months first).

Wind migration

Blustery cold winds with only the barest hint of the spring to come was the inspiration for the March marble. What came of it far exceeded my hopes with impressions of migrating birds (coming back, that is).

Here are two details from one of my favorites:





Again, loving that macro setting on the new camera. Just loving it.

Add pilgrims and stir

Today in marble-land was all about the May flowers.



Jacob sees green jungle ferns, but I think it looks like fields of purple hyacinths.



I should take a poll when this is all done with and compile what people see in each of the different designs - a sort of marbled Rorschach test.

If you're seeing green monsters, then you should spend less time fantasizing about somehow getting world series tickets...

Defying gravity

I decided on an evergreen and navy blue "feather" pattern for the December page of the calendar. After experimenting with a band application of colors (horizontal stripes), Becca said that it looked like trees, except that it was upside down. I loved the idea so I reversed the pattern, speckled up the sky and feathered away.



The image above is one of my favorites of the day, but the one below is more typical of the forests I made.



Pardon the 180 degree rotation of the photos - the sheets were hanging upside down to drip dry.

Life is but a dream

How to do a four-piece, limited-edition, fine-art, print collaboration in five days or less.

Sketch.



Simplify.



Carve.



Proof.



Carve.



Proof.



Carve.



Proof.



Meanwhile...

Marble.



Marble.



Marble.



Put it all together...

Lock up.



Ink.



First color.



Second color.



Third (and final) color.



Number.



Title & Sign.



Lather, rinse, repeat.



And voila! Five days of intense sketching, carving, marbling, proofing, more carving, more marbling, more proofing, color selecting, and finally editioning a series of boat prints - all carved by Marisa Escolar, and all marbled & printed by me, Shelley Barandes.

While we've done work together before, this was our first collaboration where we really successfully played off of each other, responding to the various elements of the different media that we were working in. It was incredibly gratifying. Having bantered about dropping our other jobs to do full-time fine art collaborations (in a mostly joking sort of way) we are already planning our next (this time cross-continental) project (gritty urban landscapes - woo hah!). It should be interesting to see how working in different locations changes the evolution of design.

Marisa will be selling these limited edition prints both individually and as a collection at Open Studios in SF next weekend, as well as at the CityArt gallery on Valencia in the Mission throughout November, December and January. I, too, will have half of the edition for sale in Boston at our own holiday Open Studio in December.

A Wrinkle in Time

I'm planning my first ever calendar.

It's not a simple thing - there are a plethora of print shops out there and nearly every single one is also planning a calendar. So how can I make my calendar super special?

I am going to make a paper-marbled letterpress calendar.

It's an entirely over-ambitions project, the details of which aren't entirely hashed out yet - but here's a sneak peek at some of the colors and patterns I'm considering for the edition.



I've been in marbling mode working on a collaboration with Marisa, who is visiting this week, so I'm pretty excited about the prospect of doing more! Stay tuned for process shots of our soon-to-be-incredible edition.

Losing my marbles

This weekend I did something I've been meaning to do for years - over fifteen, in fact. I have marbled paper on many occasions, but always under another's watchful eye (read: someone else set the whole thing up, I just threw pretty paints on the water). Finally, FINALLY, I decided to wait no longer - as a birthday present to myself, I splurged on trays and paints, alum and oxgall, irish moss and a blender, eye droppers and clothespins. I covered the floor in plastic sheeting, hung a 50' clothesline across the studio and back, then invited Kelly of May Day Studio to drive all the way from Vermont and share with me a weekend-long journey into the world of unsupervised paper marbling. {click here for Kelly's post of the weekend}



Jesse from Firefly Press braved torrential downpours, and even Kathleen, the designer at Taza tore herself away from the scintillating aroma-liciousness of churning chocolate to play in our buckets of moss-water.



Still in the experimental phase, some of our colors dripped to the bottom (orange and navy blue were particularly prone to this problem). Here's the before and after six hours of marbling and dragging a shish-kebob stick through the size.



Kelly and some of our first soggy attempts hanging on the lines behind.



Our techniques were much improved by day two...



... so we played with color, design and technique with more confidence (if not always success). This line has some of my absolute favorites from the entire weekend.



A "stone" pattern with spanish marble (waves).



Kelly was totally down with the purple/green combos - so cool.



Giant stones, and a pair of orange monster eyes!



A blue-hued feather pattern on a fabriano tiziano paper.

It made all the difference marbling ensemble, chatting about printing and Paris (when isn't it a good time to discuss Paris?), and stealing ideas, colors and techniques from one another. Kelly tended towards the purples and greens (did I mention, how cool?) and lots of bright dense stone patterns. Jesse was a swirl lover. I myself liked the controlled patterns and giant concentric rings - and was the designated master of the spanish marble.

There are plenty of things that didn't go quite rightly (colors that spread too much was the biggest), but this notwithstanding, I definitely forsee more marbling in my future.