Today's postings

  1. [Baren 40160] Letterpress printing (Lee Churchill)
  2. [Baren 40161] Re: Letterpress printing (Charles Morgan)
  3. [Baren 40162] Baren Member blogs: Update Notification (Blog Manager)
Member image

Message 1
From: Lee Churchill
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:05:13 GMT
Subject: [Baren 40160] Letterpress printing
Send Message: To this poster

[http://barenforum.org/images/separator.gif]Hi All,

I saw another webpage has them on sale for 134.00 http://www.ohmycrafts.com/letterpressepic6toolletterpresscombo.aspx
But really I'd save yourself the $$$, this is simply using a roller to create pressure (and not much pressure since it looks all plastic). It's the soft paper that is giving the embossing. You can do this with finely cut linocuts and a spoon... or an etching press. The 'plates' they are using look exactly like the clear stamps you stick to a plexi base. Though may be harder more like a polymer plate...
This site gives a video demo http://www.scrapbookexpress.com/lbrand.html
Also if you are interested in letterpress a small Adana can usually be gotten for cheap, I was given a 5x3 for free and just had to get some parts (less than $100)... ebay often sells used presses for cheap.
Cheers,
Lee.



paper source is advertising an at home letter press machine for 150.00. i was wondering if anyone had tried it and what they thought. they also have a yudo for 300.00 and a xyron 900 for 100.00. has anyone tried any of these things? just curious
thanks
georga


[http://barenforum.org/images/separator.gif]
Member image

Message 2
From: Charles Morgan
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:12:18 GMT
Subject: [Baren 40161] Re: Letterpress printing
Send Message: To this poster

Bottle jack press, bottle jack press, bottle jack press ......

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=589959

Contact me off list .....

Cheers ...... Charles

Digest Appendix

Postings made on [Baren] members' blogs
over the past 24 hours ...

Subject: [Forest in Winter - 5] : Proofing continues ...
Posted by: Dave Bull

Continued from [Forest in Winter - 4] | Starting point of the thread is [Forest in Winter - 1]

Very much appreciating the comments and suggestion that people are leaving on these proofs. It's the old 'ju-nin to-iro' at work here ... 'Ten people, Ten colours' ... There'll be certainly no way to please everybody, but hopefully whatever I come up with as a final version will at least be acceptable to most of the collectors!

I mentioned in the previous post that it wasn't such a good idea to try this kind of work in the evening, under a single hanging bulb, and I was right, I pretty much borked it. These next two sheets don't really add anything to the discussion.

Here's the grid image with the proofs to date, with #5 and 6 pulled out (they were far too warm and muddy, and actually looked more like cherry blossoms than anything else ... so what you are seeing is 1+2 3+4 and 7+8) [Update: newer image is in Discussion section below ...]

Looking at #7 and 8, I see that I completely failed in what I had intended to try last night; I was going to cut the rose right back, keep a good contrast in the foreground, and cut back the snow shadows up in the tree branches. I totally missed on the first two, only succeeding in the third ...

I think that cutting back the shadows up in the trees is a good thing - making everything 'lighter' overhead. But with those shadows pulled back, even a very faint rose came forward too much. And we've now lost any sense that there is an embankment on the right hand side. Might be that I have to cut another block for that, we'll see ...

It's also interesting to see that - as usual - the more I try things, the more I seem to be wandering away from where it should be. I could have easily sent out #1 or #3 (say) as 'the print', and it would have probably been very well received.

But I think I can get this thing worked out a little bit better than what we've seen, so it's back to the drawing board printing bench! But that'll have to wait until this afternoon, as there is a pile of office work waiting this morning. That's . . .
[Long item has been trimmed at this point. The full blog entry can be viewed here]


This item is taken from the blog Woodblock RoundTable.
'Reply' to Baren about this item.


Subject: Vast Unpeopled Lands Final Print
Posted by: Annie B


click image for larger view

VAST UNPEOPLED LANDS

Japanese woodblock (moku hanga)
Paper size: 21" x 29" (53.3 x 73.7 cm)
Image size: 17.5" x 26" (44.5 x 66 cm)
5 shina plywood blocks
29 hand-rubbed impressions
Paper: Nishinouchi
Edition: 9

VastBlocks
I used these 4 carved blocks plus one uncarved board

It feels fitting to me that I finished this print now, just in time for the harvest festival of Thanksgiving. In this invented landscape I've imagined autumn 1620 in the Connecticut River valley, just a few months before the arrival of the Mayflower some 135 miles away. The Connecticut River valley is where I live, in the city now called Northampton. In 1620 both the people and the town here were called Norwottuck, which means "in the midst of the river."

The hills I've depicted are imaginary, in the sense that no such view of the Connecticut River exists, but the yellow hills in the distance roughly outline three of the seven peaks that make up the Holyoke Range of central Massachusetts and the large orange hill in the center of the print is based on the shape of Mount Sugarloaf just up the river in Deerfield. Deerfield is where the last Indian war in Massachusetts occurred in 1704.

sugarloaf-mountain
Photo of Mt. Sugarloaf, from TripAdvisor.com

As I described in an earlier post, the patterns on the hills are based on surviving patterns from the neighboring Iroquois and Mohawk nations (originally from upstate New York) and the constellations are imaginary, just me trying to imagine how a culture that subsisted off the land in a migratory way, both hunting and fishing and planting crops seasonally, might see the stars.

Working on this print made me feel sad and tender. I love this valley, this river, this land. The Connecticut River has sustained my family for many generations. And this same land sustained many generations of people before my ancestors ever saw it. Those native people are invisible to me in my everyday life. I felt myself calling them forth as I worked on . . .
[Long item has been trimmed at this point. The full blog entry can be viewed here]

This item is taken from the blog Woodblock Dreams.
'Reply' to Baren about this item.


Subject: The Complexity Of All These Things

A

This item is taken from the blog Against the grain.
'Reply' to Baren about this item.