Valentine's Letterpress Love

Valentine's Day is just around the corner!

Subscribe your honey to our Letterpress Lovers Club - the letterpress-of-the month club where the subscriber receives a unique letterpress stationery item once a month for the duration of their membership. Three-month, six-month and yearly subscriptions are available for purchase from our Etsy shop.

Each month the item(s) are different (a fun surprise in your mailbox!) and will include an assortment of stationery items such as notecard or greeting card sets, art prints, gift tags, letterpress packaging items, seasonal stationery pieces, and more.

Buy a membership for your Valentine or as a gift for yourself!

Three-Month Subscription
http://www.etsy.com/listing/46694579/letterpress-lovers-club-membership-3

Six-Month Subscription
http://www.etsy.com/listing/50949069/monthly-letterpress-subscription

Twelve-Month Subscription
http://www.etsy.com/listing/86357503/monthly-letterpress-subscription

A limited number of memberships are available for sale.

Your first month will ship at the beginning of the next month after purchase (i.e. buy in April and your first mailing will ship at the beginning of May). Mailings are sent at the beginning of the month.

XOXO,
Sunlit Letterpress

Recent Custom Letterpress Business Cards

A few photos of some recently printed custom letterpress business cards for a variety of clients. The top two were designed by Sunlit Letterpress, the bottom two by the clients themselves.

The card at the top was printed on 220 lb. Crane Lettra - and the photo shows the increased thickness and depth of impression that comes with a thicker stock. The bottom card is printed on 80 lb. kraft stock - it is a lighter stock than the Crane Lettra, but it is a bit more rigid and still offers a nice finish for letterpress printing.

For more information on custom letterpress business card printing - designed by us or by you - please contact the studio. We look forward to working with you!

Short Documentary Worth Sharing - Ink + Paper

ink&paper from Ben Proudfoot on Vimeo.

I was recently sent a link to the above documentary by Alex Kefalos at Wits Pictures. I get sent quite a few clips from people wanting them to be posted on the blog, and more often than not they are just short clips of a Heidelberg Windmill's magnificent parts moving together to create something beautiful. There's nothing wrong with that of course, but I was excited to see this little documentary was something different and special.

I think this is one of the first little movies that wasn't entirely promotional in nature. Here instead is a real look inside the situation that many letterpress printers and their suppliers find themselves in. Letterpress printing is not the glamorous industry that many people think it is. I think it is assumed sometimes that because letterpress is expensive, that it means printers are making lots of cash. The reality is that our supplies are very expensive and hard to find, parts and equipment is scarce, and that our work involves lots of physical labor (blood, sweat and tears - literally). And, as the film shows, it's not at all easy to make a living - especially during a recession.

So on that note, I invite you to watch the documentary yourself and see what you think. Thank you Alex for sending it to us and to Ben Proudfoot and company for putting together this more realistic view of the state of the printing and print supply industry.

Got Craft?

What are you doing on December 5th? If you're in Vancouver you should come down to the Got Craft? show at 2205 Commercial Drive from 10 am to 5pm. We'll have a bunch of stationery for sale, including holiday cards and gift tags. You'll also be able to buy subscriptions to our Letterpress Lovers Club for your friends and family as holiday gifts - just be sure to bring their mailing address with you so you can fill out the order form. Three and six-month memberships are available.

The above notecards will be for sale, but you can also buy them from our Etsy shop here.

So what else is going on in the studio - lots of printing of business cards (custom and from our Ready-to-Wear line), wedding invitations, and a limited edition art print for a local artist. It also looks like we have a move coming up for the studio at the beginning of next year - which already has me stressed. No matter how you look at it, moving tons of cast iron from point A to point B is just never something you look forward to. Ugh.

Anyways, be sure to come see us at Got Craft! We look forward to meeting you!

Letterpress Internship

Hello friends - We have received a lot of emails lately from people interested in applying for internships with Sunlit Letterpress. Unfortunately with our schedule and little one crawling around, I am just not able to answer every email, so knowing that most the applicants follow the blog I will answer you here.

Although I would love to be able to offer internships, this is just not something that would be possible at this time. I do appreciate your emails and resumes however; and if internships become a possibility in the future, I will be sure to post about such an opportunity on this blog and on our website.

Thanks again for your interest!

Chrysanthemums

Above - some remnants available in our Etsy shop...

This week we are working on custom invitations for a great bride and groom getting married in Vancouver in May. The bride was a fan of our "Hibiscus" design, so we are customizing it with her wedding colors - yellow and iris blue. I will post photos when they are completed.

At Indie I Do this year there were a lot of brides asking about our catalog of designs for wedding invitations. We don't actually have one - every design has been custom so far, except for the "Hibiscus" suite. It seems there is a growing demand for a catalog of designs that people could just pick from, so I've got this on the to-do list...Not sure when I will get to it, but at least it made it on the list.

We are currently booking wedding invitation orders into the end of March/early April - so if you need invitations for a summer wedding, please contact Jordan at the studio to book your press time and avoid disappointment!

Summer Flowers

Above are some photos of a few thank you cards that went with a custom wedding order that we printed last week (photos of the full suite to follow). The bride wanted a nice yellow that wasn't too mustard-like, or too pastel, so this was the happy medium. The cards and envelopes are from Crane's Lettra in Pearl.

Speaking of Crane paper, I am once again at a loss for what to do with this supplier. They certainly seem to want to burn the people that buy their products. We are located in Canada, which means that there are not a ton of fellow letterpress printers up here buying Crane Lettra products. This means that when I phone the supposed "distributors" of Crane Lettra in Canada, I am repeatedly told that they don't carry the Lettra line because of lack of demand. These are the same companies that are listed by the Crane rep as being distributors, and are also listed on their website (oh, and I've tried the Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto distributors and none of them carry Lettra).

So for a long time, we ordered directly from Crane because there was no alternative. This stunk - plain and simple. I had three orders in a row get screwed up - items were left out of orders, customs paperwork was incorrect so I was charged double the duties upon import (two cases were never resolved), you can't order online if you are Canadian, packages would arrive damaged because they were not properly packaged, etc. So after much research and trouble we FINALLY managed to find a wholesale distributor in the US that was willing to sell and ship to us. We were so happy!!! Life was good! We also finally no longer had to pay retail pricing and orders arrived undamaged with all the items inside!

But, it was not to last. A few weeks ago we tried to order a large amount of Crane Lettra from our new distributor and they told us they were out of stock because Crane would no longer be selling Pearl Lettra in the size we use to them (the distributor). What the devil?

So now we have no choice but to buy in a larger size (which is a true pain, and results in higher shipping costs), or buy direct from Crane again. I am so frustrated with this whole situation I may have to abandon Crane products entirely because it shouldn't be this hard to get supplies in. I realize many letterpress printers are not HUGE consumers of paper like some other printing sectors are, but c'mon. Why make paper specifically for letterpress printers, and then make it so gosh darned difficult to order that we get frustrated and give up? I know we're in Canada, but don't punish us for that!!! At the risk of sounding like John Stossel - give me a break!

Happy letterpressing!

Artist Prints

Above is a photo of a limited edition series of prints that we recently printed for Vancouver artist Scott Malin for his upcoming show "Sketchbooks and New Drawings" at RedIron Studio & Gallery here in Vancouver from June 5-14, 2009 (opening reception June 5th at 6PM). This was a limited edition of 33 prints on Crane Lettra Pearl stock with a blood red ink.

We wish Scott the best of luck with his opening!

Happy letterpressing!