We fulfilled one of our dreams in life yesterday: we bought a little tiny letterpress. It’s a 5×8-inch Kelsey Excelsior O that dates to the late 1920s or early ’30s. We ordered new rollers today, so with a little luck, we should have it up and running in a couple weeks. Thanks to the good folks at Porridge Papers in Lincoln for rescuing it from the scrap heap and selling it to us.
This Friday marks Arbor Day, and we’ve had this block print in mind for months. We took a slice of an old landscaping timber, cut out the shape of Nebraska (home to Arbor Day) with a bandsaw and used that as our block. Simple, grungy, texture-y. We love this sort of stuff. 
The latest in the block print holiday card series.
The start of a block-print series. All the best in 2014.
he good people at HearNebraska.org asked me to help with an exciting fundraising project for their awesome organization. They’ve lined up a small show with Simon Joyner at HN headquarters, which it shares with DP Muller Photo Studio in Benson. And it’s being catered by Post Punk Kitchen’s chef, Isa Chandra Moskowitz. To add to the intimacy of the experience, HN asked me to design and print tickets to the event, and I had a blast doing it.
They’re set in Lost Type’s Sullivan, cut in linoleum blocks and printed on French Paper’s Speckletone cream 80# cover with Gamblin’s Ultramarine relief ink. All that means these tickets are pretty much bomb-proof. The hatched bevel of the type made this super fun to cut and beautiful to print.
I designed the seal for the flap on the back of the envelope with a hammer and microphone as a nod to my favorite song of Jonyer’s, ‘Blue Hammer,’ and his reputation as the hardest-working man in the Omaha music scene.
Happily for HN (though sadly for you), the show sold out. You can hear what you’ll be missing below.
It might be March. And I may have sent out only a handful of them because I ran out of time. But I printed up some valentine cards a few weeks ago and gave the good people of Maché a rundown of how I made them. They’re always doing good work, and I’m happy when I get to contribute in some small way. Now, forget that you’ve seen these cards and act surprised when one arrives in your mail box in eleven months or so.
I whipped up some block-printed coasters last night for a little self-promotion.
Happy Holidays from flying, bike-riding Santa.
Today I got around to scanning some recent work, including these block print valentine postcards. Maybe next year, I’ll lose the red, white and pink color scheme.
I made some lino-cut postcards last week.
