Merry Christmas!

Untitled from Joshua Levine on Vimeo.

Merry Christmas to me!

A new press on its way from Queensland.
Scored on Ebay.
I am terrified! Where will I put it? what will I do with Mavis Pearl? What will I have to do to it so it will print?
Gasp.
Its a Chandler & Price old style 10x15, produced around 1887 which is actually older than Mavis - Mavis was produced in 1892.
Its bigger, stronger, will allow me to print larger surface areas with even impression (I hope)
It needs a bit of cleaning up and a paint, and not sure what else yet until I lay eyes on it hopefully not much. Also not sure of its gender... will have to get to know it before I come to a decision. Roger, Joan, Francis, Norma....

On the press this weekend

After a whinge that time on the press would be limited during the school holidays, my wonderful mum and dad came to the rescue! A day and night with the grand parents is just what my kids needed (and me!) I got so much done (husband was enjoying a weekend of fishing away)

BLISS! is ordering home delivery curry for dinner, eating it in the shed with my press, sitting on my mid century settee that was rescued taken off a verge, working until late listening to the radio and getting so much work done.

Slight tinge of guilt that my bliss did not involve my loved ones but hey, it was just a once off......

PS That's not Vegimite - its ink...
PSS the 'Bah humbug' card is a custom card just for my man, using my lovely vintage wood type. And yes I know the lock up of the type is VERY POOR form.

Etsy front page collections

Front page offerings. Love these!!

Featuring my Tree of life coasters:
To view the treasury, click here.

And my yellow and grey doily save the date invitations:
To view this treasury click here

Bubble wrap Calender. Need I say any more but COOL!

www.bubblecalendar.com

If you are in Perth Western Australia, you can find them at Mr Sparrow in Subi.
MR Sparrow

Etsy front page...twice...IN ONE DAY!

Letterpress goodness

Some arrivals in my mail box.
Very excited!
This is  a collection of coasters from around the globe. Love + Letterpress swap as contributed by some Ladies of Letterpress members (Including myself)

Its great to see different colours working together and on top of each other as well as the range of qualities depending on which press they were printed on. This may assist is guiding me to my next press.....

Some Christmas goodness...

Find us in these great online magazines, chocka block full of tremedous home made treats!

I Love Pretty Things

Tickle the Imagination

Science freak

Ok I admit. I have a dark side - within lies a geek. To anyone who know me I am the LEAST mathematical person and I am logically challenged, but I love the quirkiness of the crazed scientist.
So, naturally a coaster set celebrating the geek in all of us entitled 'Pick your poison' is in order.
Use them to subtly label you dinner guests.. "Why no Gerald, I did not mean to imply you are overly fond of alcohol" "Im so sorry you think that I think you are a Valium addict" and so on...
Blue Caravan
Made It
ETSY

New things

So I have been printing like mad to the point where I think my brain has shrunk from the use of solvents - I use canola oil at the end of the day to clean up but in between for fast clean ups I am using the hard stuff.. I really must invest in some low scented/fumes or something type of clean up but is heaps more expensive...

Anyway the fruits of my labour so far...

The first is my big boys birthday invitation.
Its actually my first job that was 2 colours that needed good registration and Im pretty chuffed with the result! Printed on Crane lettra fluro white. The text was printed after using black ink on my Canon Pixma. I tried colour text but for some reason when my printer prints colour (onto this paper) at the end of the print it dumps splodges of ink right at the bottom but it doesn't do this for black text... will investigate WHY!
I am planning on creating some fill-ins of this one, plus some greeting cards...

This is my January calender page for a letterpress swap.
A group of Ladies of Letterpress (an awesome resource of friends and information) print a month each, and post enough to a coordinator (Lady Bug Press) who collates and distributed a full set back to us all.
I was kind of free-styling, using what I had, which inevitably ends up with heaps of passes. The text 'January' was a collection of wood and metal moveable type. The calender is a moveable type calender - a really nifty tool! I did learn that the more pases you make through the press, the more opportunity there is to mess one up and there fore a larger percentage of them become un-useable I am working on a formula so that I am not left short! I think I started with around 50 and each pass messed a few up , so that by the end I was left with 36 - just enough! Will need to get someone else to work on this formula... Brain has stopped... see, too many solvents!

If you buy these then you are uber cool...

Yes, purchasing a set of these fab coasters will ACTUALLY make you your next dinner party a raging success*
Get your hands on them at one of these equally awesome online retailers!
Blue Caravan
Made It
ETSY

 

* DISCLAIMER: Fluid Ink will not actually guarantee the success of your party.

Doily Peace Joy Hope - Letterpress Christmas Gift tags x6

Gorgeous, plain and simple Christmas gift tags.
Soft white cotton rag card stock, blind embossed with the words peace Joy and Hope embellished with a small doily, finished with a kraft natural hole re-enforcer and hung with natural bakers twine.
$5 per pack of 6.
Available online at Find
Blue Caravan
Made It
ETSY
DELICIOUS!

Find Fluid Ink!

Find us ONLINE now at:
Blue Caravan
Made It
ETSY

And in a real life shop (Western Australia)
Annie P Paperie

Yay!

Forever in Blue Jeans (Babe)

So it was my 13th wedding anniversary, I had just found a haul of awesome wood type blocks - what better way to say I love you than to quote Neil Diamond?....

Doily save the date invitation - Front Page of ETSY - Again Woot!

Front page once again. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

View the treasury HERE

Tresuries on ETSY

A couple of ETSY treasuries featuring my items.

Check it out HERE

Check it out HERE

NEW products - TAGALICIOUS

Gift tags for all occasions.

Buy them now in my ETSY shop here: Fluid Ink ETSY shop.

MAN TAGS
A series of 5 different tags suitable for the man in your life.
Printed on Kraft re-cycled paper, using black ink.
The images used were printed using vintage printers blocks that I scrounged the virtual world for.
They are vintage themselves. Some of them needed a heap of filing on the edges as the borders were printing as well as the image and I managed to hurt my palm from taking the chase out over and over to file down the block, put it back, pull a print, take it out file it down etc, etc...... Thanks must go to husband for allowing me to clog up one of his files in the process.

DOILY TAGS

Produced by punching out of the 'reject' doily save the date cards - the ones that didn't quite turn out perfectly.

 

BRANCHES TAGS
Again produced by using the 'reject' save the date branches cards- of which there were quite a few- first run and all!.