stamps | 45 Ginger Biscuits

Tag Archives: stamps

May 23, 2013 · 10:00 am

Whale of a time!

Wow – It has been AGES since my last post but it has been time well spent! The printing press is now up and running and we’ve had lots of work done on our house. This is just a quick post to show one of my first finished printy thing, a birthday card for a friend who is a whale enthusiast.

The black ink hasn’t taken as well as I’d like but it was the end of a printing run of wedding invites so seemed little point in ‘topping it up’. It seems to plod on forever on almost no ink so a tiny bit goes a very long way! The colour was hand painted afterwards with a water based dye called Brusho. I met a very talented artist called Gerard Hobson at York Open Studios a month or so ago, he uses the same inks and recommended them – I love them!

A New Toy

Hello All, I don’t know about you but where we are the weather is stunning, springy and bordering on summeresk – laundry done and dry on the line in one day, so satisfying! It is too nice not to have mentioned the weather but on to the matter at hand…

Having made the lino cut for the wedding invitation (which can be seen here), we decided the onerous task of getting 100 good prints when half of them seem to smudge was far too much of a challenge. Whilst I suggested scanning the image and printing invites, Mr Biscuit hit eBay in search of a printing press, sure enough he found this little monster.

It is an Adana 8 x 5 table top letter press, it needs rollers but aside from that we have been assured it is in good working order, which is super exciting. But… and this isn’t a small but… it came with this lot…

Letters. Thousands and thousands of letters, led lines, spacers and all sorts of things for which we don’t know the names and haven’t the foggiest idea of how to apply. If anyone out there has any advice on letterpress printing or if you know of any good letter press / lino carving blogs I’d be massively grateful! By the end of the first day of sorting I had one clean tray full of flouncy italicised letters (not an upper case A in site), several trays of grubby stamps and one or two boxes of bits: