A Visit to Vancouver

Last month, we were lucky enough to spend 3 weeks in Canada for our rather belated honeymoon. We had a wonderful time, met some delightful people and were blown away by the spectacular scenery.

Don't worry, I'm not going to spam you up with holiday snaps, this is heading back in a printing direction very shortly.

We travelled around all over British Columbia and Alberta during our trip. One of the many highlights was a day spent exploring the shops and markets of Granville Island in Vancouver.

We'd heard rumour of a letterpress studio operating there and we found them! One Black Stone Press.

We ducked in for a chat and were met with the sight of one of the most stylish, well-appointed and cleanest letterpress studios we have ever seen.

There we met a lovely chap named David Clifford, a fellow Brit who's been living (and printing) in Canada for many years, after apprenticing in London in the 1960s. He runs Black Stone Press with his daughter, Yasmine.

I was astounded by all the equipment that David had collected over the years, and again how clean he managed to keep everything! It was a fascinating visit, and we'll certainly add 'stalk local letterpress people' to our to do list on any future holidays we may be lucky enough to take.

To Have And To Hold

Broadening horizons today, with our first proper bespoke project.

Sam Boy's youngest brother (he has a lot of brothers), is getting married this year, and we were delighted to be able to help out by designing and printing the wedding invites.

The design went through a few iterations of font and colour before we reached sign-off, but luckily for us Bill and Jenny are very laid back, so this wasn't in any way arduous.

On reflection, printing 3 colours each in 2 designs, when inking each impression by hand, probably wasn't the most efficient way to approach this, but they look bloody gorgeous (in my humble opinion), so it was all worth it.

So, here they are in all their coral, teal and golden glory. Printed on 450gsm Wild White, which is FSC certified (of course):

Here are the inks being mixed, I'm so in love with these colours:

2 colours down:

Drying:

Before trimming:

And finally, getting packed up:

If in doubt, always add washi tape.

We hope the happy couple are as delighted with these as we are, and are very much looking forward to more jobs of this nature. Maybe one day even for people who aren't actually related to us...!