New Toy!

A little off-topic today, i.e. this is not about letterpress, or any other kind of printing, but I hope it will prove to be of interest nonetheless. I'm excited anyway.

My lovely maternal grandparents, now in their 80s, are looking to downsize in the not too distant future. We're doing rather well off the pre-emptive mass clear-out. Alongside some awesome 1950s-60s kitchenwear, our favourite new toy is this! A cine camera that belonged to my great granddad. Check it out (and excuse my poor photography):

I was lucky enough to know my great granddad when I was very young, and I remember him fondly, though he was suffering the late stages of Alzheimer's at the time. In his younger days he owned a music shop near Liverpool Street, and was featured in the local newspaper in the 1960s, railing against these newfangled 'electric' guitars. What a legend.

As far as I know, he bought this camera in the mid-1930s. It's still in fabulous condition, complete with the original carry case, instruction manual and so forth. We haven't managed to find any film for it yet, but I'm sure there must be some somewhere in my grandparents cavernous loft. We shall see.

What I love most is the f-stop settings (at least, I think that's what they are), being basically defined by the weather... including "For Average Subjects and Scenes in Direct Sunlight", and my personal favourite, "For Use in Tropics. See Manual". Amazing.

Thanking you

A little later in the year than we might have hoped, we've printed these cards for our Christmas thank yous. Certainly suitable for non-festive expressions of gratitude as well, they'll be appearing in our shop sometime soon.

We wanted to keep these fairly simple in design, and liked the idea of experimenting with un-inked type again. We've used blind impressions before, but so far, only for insulting people : )

Now I just have to go and write the blimmin things...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Birthday Card

It was my best friend's birthday this week. She has the slight misfortune of being born on New Year's Day, so it's always a bit tricky trying to organise celebrations etc. Last year was her 30th and her husband arranged a fantastic surprise party in a lovely pub in North London. The theme was Buffy the Vampire Slayer (awesome), as Lisa is a huge fan of the show. We were chief in charge of decorations and got massively carried away with candles, velvet, bats, tarot cards etc. We even had my Dad whittle a stake for us. It was pretty cool.

This year, as it's less of a landmark birthday, no such shindiggery is taking place. Though we have printed a Buffy-themed birthday card for her. This is a quote from (I believe) the third season of Buffy. A slightly ironic birthday message, but I think it works perfectly...

Here's the locked-up type (I love this font, I want to use it for everything!):

A delicious blood red for the ink:

We were going to use this crossbow detail on there as well, but it looked (to use the technical term)... a bit crap.

And here's the final card! Gorgeous!

Not sure if this is a bit too niche to make available for sale, though I suppose the Buffy cult is a big one. Drop us a line if you'd like to see this in the shop : )