Hot Tips (literally) for Winter Printing

Stack's Snack: Bite Sized Delights

There is a super small coffee chain you may have never heard of called Starbucks. It's called sarcasm, folks! They have Bacon Gruyere Egg Bites and I have a fear every time I order these that I'm saying Gruyere wrong... that's what we call a personal problem. I decided instead of going through the cheese pronunciation shame I would just make them myself. Here is the recipe from the wonderful Once Upon a Chef.

 

On My Desk: Faire Winter Market Orders

I’m packing spring orders for some very fun boutiques! Some of you may not know that I sell wholesale to boutiques all across the U.S. and internationally through a company called Faire. Faire just had its big Winter Market so we (I can say we here because Vol 1 Colin is also on the packing team this week) are just slinging cards and getting retailers restocked after the holidays.

Oh, are you a boutique owner reading this blog? Lol what are the chances of that? (gotta shoot my shot!) Here is my direct link for Faire AGAIN.

I also should say I have a Spring Collection coming out for you all shortly after Valentine's Day. I can feel your excitement from here. My review: it's very colorful and I dig it.

Snackable Story: Surviving Winter in the Press Shop

Okay, so I told you about my sweet, sweet summer garage set up for printing.

What wasn’t sweet? THE WINTER. I live in a place where it gets cold. Like your nose hair freezes when you walk out the door. Okay, dramatic… that happens one week a year. It’s called good story telling. Read a book.

If this was a film with Morgan Freeman narrating it would go like this:

Everything was going perfectly. Katie was bopping to tunes (lol Morgan Freeman saying bopping to tunes) and pressing a full card line of silly ideas on cotton paper. But, you see, things quickly turned. Fall lasted 2.5 seconds and Katie was freezing her buns off troubleshooting a cold hunk of metal and very unspreadable ink.

So what did I learn from it? Great news. I am going to tell you.

Tips for platen press letterpress printing in cold weather *that worked for me*:

1. Flood Light: Clamp that light under the ink plate of your press. The flood light gets real warm and kept the ink warm on the press and heated up the rollers enough for smooth ink transfer but not enough that my rubber rollers were melting. 

Melting rubber rollers would have been tragic.

Non printers: why is that important? Cold ink is stiff. It doesn’t spread well. It is the absolute worst to work with.

2. Blow Dryer: Before I put the ink on the press I'd need to mix my colors. I’d use a blow dryer to get the ink nice and warm and spreadable for mixing. Blow dryer + flood light = cold ink problem solved!

Also fun trick for printers - you can also use a blow dryer to heat up your printing plate if it is curled up. Just don’t over do it.

3. A Box: Get yourself a box. Fill up that box with your inks and rollers and plates and paper (maybe a different box for the paper)…store all that stuff inside. In fact, get yourself a wildly disorganized closet instead of a box. That’s what I did!

4. Children’s Overalls: Warm clothes. It gets cold. I prioritized all my heating elements to the press (the lights, the space heaters... all to the press... what a giver I am). I needed some warm gear. Here I am pictured in some very fun Carhartt boys overalls (not sponsored lol - but call me if you need an adult model for kids clothes). If you too are the average size of an 8 year old boy **hot tip!** you can get boys overalls for cheaper than adult size things. Another hot tip - you could also get your baby the same overalls and take a "who wore it better" photo. 

Thankfully for me it is only winter here for 9 months of the year. I'm kidding... it's only a few months. I made it and then I decided hey - let's never do that again. So, I talked Vol 1 Colin into adding a whole addition on to our garage for a studio space.