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.

Stand By Me

As you'll tire of me mentioning, we (as in Grey Letter Press) have a stand at the Crafty Fox Market in Brixton on 25th April. As this is our first ever market, we've had a heck of a lot of prep to do.

We're chugging away reprinting our current range, designing our business cards, thinking about packaging etc. We even bought a cash box. It's all very exciting.

Here are the paper bags we've letterpressed with our logo, cute huh? Our customers (if there are any, eek!) deserve the best...

Our biggest concern so far has been how we're actually going to go about displaying our cards at the market. As part of Crafty Fox Uncovered, we're only allocated a table around 75cm square. Which is obviously fine, but requires some creative thinking to have it not look a busy mess, whilst still displaying as much of our work as possible.

Obviously there's nothing wrong with a good old fashioned wire rack display, but it didn't seem very 'us'. So, one half of our duo having had a former life as a paper engineer (not me, the other one), we decided it might be a good idea to make our own display stand. As if we didn't have enough work to do already...

Well, I'm delighted to say it's done, and in my humble opinion, it looks bloody fantastic! Thought I'd share some pics with you here. It's made out of grey foamboard, cut out with a scalpel, and slotted together by hand.

Please ignore the pencil marks we've still to rub out, which rather spoils the look, I know!

It has the advantage of being easy to transport as it's incredibly lightweight and breaks down to relatively small pieces, as you can see.

For any fellow traders out there who like the look of this, you can download the PDF designs for it here. You've still got the hard bit to do, obviously, but we hope it proves useful!

We've going to use a wooden type tray alongside this as well, to allow us to show more designs, and give our stall more of a letterpress-y vibe. It's all coming together!

We do hope you'll be able to come along and see us. Saturday 25th April at the Dogstar in Brixton - get it in your diary or magic phone thing.