Our friend, Portia, is a counselor/consultant here in town. Every year she sends out cards to her clients, and this year she decided to step it up a bit and have the cards letterpressed! She wanted 5 x 7 cards with letterhead on one side and her logo on the other with a matching envelope with her return address letterpressed on the envelope. She wanted the color scheme to match her website.
For the most part, it was a piece of cake. The problem arose when we decided to die-cut the envelopes ourselves (as artists, we realize there are always problems -- sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse). We thought it would be easy and would save some money, to boot. As it turned out, our press is not big enough to hold the die we had made to punch out A7 envelopes! Of course, we found this out right before our deadline!
In dealing with this unexpected obstacle we practiced some creative engineering, and we learned a new trick! The die was too big to fit in the chase, but we realized that we could do a lock-up directly in the press instead of in the chase. Genius! They turned out great! By the time we cut out the envelopes, folded them, glued them together, and added the lick and stick adhesive to the top flap, we determined that it is actually a LOT cheaper to just buy the envelopes... but how else could we match the envelopes exactly to the cards? Portia chose a nice smooth Welsh Blue Neenah paper -- surprisingly similar to the blue Elie had chosen for her cards -- with recycled content and made from sustainably harvested trees.
Portia loved them so much, she has asked to print up the invites for her and her husbands annual holiday party, but that is a story for another time!
Our friend, Elie, asked us to print her up some cards. Her friend, Patrice, designed them.
Elie chose a nice blue laid paper by Neenah. Neenah offers recycled content and sustainably harvested paper that will be showcased again in our next blog post...
We got to play around with die-cutting again! This project was a little more of a challenge with the registration. There was only a margin of a millimeter around the black border.
These should drum up business nicely. In addition to her superb abilities in proofreading and editing, Elie is also a talented musician. You can listen to her music here. I am off now to draw her a show card for her next performance at the Jade Lounge!
Whew! What a busy week.
First, I just have to mention how nice it is to have a grocery store within walking distance! It's not the New Seasons we had hoped for, but we're happy to welcome our little Grocery Outlet to the neighborhood. We were all set to make some Chicken Alfredo for dinner, when we realized that although we did buy chicken yesterday when we went to New Seasons, we did not buy any pasta, heavy cream, or parmesan cheese! So, we walked over to Grocery Outlet. Let me just say I have never been to a Grocery Outlet before, so I was surprise to see that the "dairy" aisle contained such things as cheese and crackers, cheese spread in a can, and cheese flavored snacks... but no actual dairy products.The motto of Grocery Outlet is "Overshop. Underspend." How American is that?!
Anyways, check out our new type cabinet! We got a heckuva deal on it, and we just had to borrow our friends' truck to move it.
A lot, but not all, of the assortrements in the photo came with it.
We can finally unstack our type cases for the last time! There are slots to hold our galley trays, and our extra rollers tuck away nicely in the slots on the left. Our studio is starting to look like one!
Well, the I Heart Art Mixer Match was a success!
photos from the etsylabs flickr site
It was held at a swank furniture/design store downtown called Design Within Reach.
We had an opportunity to practice our pitch and show our cards to sixteen local retailers. An exciting number of them expressed interest in carrying our cards!
Here, we are talking to Dillon, from the Museum of Contemporary Craft.
The whole event was pretty low-key. Based on the "speed dating" model, we had two minutes with each of the vendors to describe our cards and ourselves and to see if we could make a match. The event was sponsored by Etsy, I Heart Art, and somehow PNCA was involved, too. It was great to see so many familiar faces.
The Portland art community is fairly small, and as it turned out, we had already met many of the vendors at various boutiques, parties, and barbeques around town! (Hopefully, this will work to our advantage.)
We'll keep you posted if we get into any more stores.
Wish us luck!
Soon, you’ll see images of our friend Ruth’s business cards. She requested something that would double as a business card and a hang-tag for her clothing. Our first experience with die cutting is upon us and we’re excited to see how it works!
On a completely unrelated note, look at how awesome our rabbit is! His name is Mumford and he couldn’t be more of a sweetheart.
