Summer + Letterpress

Hi all! Please excuse my absence. Summer has treated me well, but I am back... hopefully to add some letterpress inspiration to your life. 

Summer is for unwinding, letting your hair down and walking bear-foot through the sand. It's for dinner's outside, and late-night campfires with friends and also a time to dream about what things will be like. In the summer months, I like to spend time to just be. It's those quiet moments where inspiration comes out and where I figure out how I'd like to grow this little shop of mine. I'd love for it to be a bigger part of my life one day. I mean, it's a huge part of my life already, considering the Vandercook is in our living room... but I'm just looking forward to a time where I can give it the attention it deserves, in a studio where the roof doesn't leak on the press and the neighbours don't make our glasses shake with their base. All this thinking has lead to the idea of moving away from the city. Where we can have a piece of land to grow our own food, and have a couple of chicken... and where I can get the letterpress studio out of our living room and into a proper studio space with big windows and good ventilation. I feel like when that happens my creativty will just sore, and I will be much more in-tune with my letterpress work. So that's been the goal for the past little while, and I'm hoping we will find a home soon. 

Another reason why we're looking to move is that we need a good in between location for our friends and family to visit. We would be the meeting ground. I really love the idea of sharing delicious meals around a large table with those I care about most. Especially if that meal includes vegetables right from our own garden. It's just so much more satisfying knowing exactly where they came from. 

This seems right inline with what Kinfolk magazine has been writing about. Kinfolk is a beautiful little publication focusing on small gatherings, and has been super inspiring for me. Over the summer I was involved with the Toronto Kinfolk Dinner, and letterpress printed a small run of recipe cards and thank you notes. I decided to handset the type – I really love how lead type seems to dance on a line and isn't so perfect. So, perfectly imperfect. I played with hand-lining the envelopes with some really beautiful craft paper printed with illustrations of pears. Hand-lining was much easier than I thought. A little spray glue and patience can go a long way. 

  

I was happy that I had the opportunity to be involved with the Toronto dinner series for Kinfolk. It was so much, and hopefully I'll get the chance to do it again sometime soon.