krank press

back from hiatus

2011-07-02T22:55:00.000-07:00

wow! a year has gone by! these have been the most insane, say, 18 months, maybe ever--I only finished 'cleaning' after the wedding maelstrom, like, last week. and of course a new mess has moved in to take the old one's place. but now that I've figured out how to redirect my krank press url to the blog (that is until i initiate a website), I figured I'd better breathe some new life into the blog. more new posts soon, soon.

back from texas

2010-05-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

we are back from texas, back from our honeymoon, back from wedding-land. our house is a huge mess, so belated spring cleaning is the task at hand.
but soon! i will be posting photos from the wedding, or in particular, photos of all the craft projects, both successful and not-as-successful...

cute factory

2010-01-21T01:04:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in that holiday fair mayhem, I managed to squeeze in a workshop at Home Ec, which was so so fun. Home Ec, if you have not been there, is a super dangerous place, and basically my version of a candy shop. Jenny has amazingly reliably amazing taste, and everything in the store--fabric, buttons, books, craft kits, aprons, cards, etc--is beautiful and tempting. PLUS she has room/facilities for after-hours workshops, and I was lucky enough to land a spot in the roster.

I wanted to do a printing workshop, but cooking one up that will produce solid results in a mere few hours was a challenge. My solution was to do a class in 'hand carved stamps'. I'd picked up a number of stamping books in Japan last year (wait: two years ago. jeez.) and had been chomping at the bit to make more stamps, plus, it seemed like a quicker/more portable version of the relief printing that I do at Krank.

The class went blazingly well, and as Alex observed when he dropped by, it was a "cute factory." I supplied a sheet of ideas, as well as a number of pre-carved stamps, but everyone rocked a shocking amount of splendid looking stamps in a super short amount of time. Here are a selection of shots--my apologies for the dim lighting, but it was late in the evening...

I'll be teaching the class again at the end of the month--we printed gift wrap (simple folded japanese bags, tags, wrapping paper) and will use the same materials again this time, but now with an emphasis on valentine's day.

holiday mayhem pt 2!

2010-01-20T22:58:00.000-08:00

The second fair we did was Renegade SF, right before the holidays. We *almost* didn't make it, due to horrendous time-management on my part (have I mentioned that I bought myself a small library of time-management self-help books over Christmas?), but due to extreme level-headedness and late-night-driving-willingness from Alex, we made it up to SF in time for the fair.
It took place at Ft. Mason, which was meaningful for two reasons. 1) My aunt Priscilla, who has always been one of my craft heroes, had her weavings in a show there almost precisely thirty years previous, and 2) while taking a fantastic architectural daylighting class in grad school, from another hero, Cris Benton, my group project was to build a large model of this precise building to use as a basis for daylighting analysis. So I was very, very familiar with the building, having once built every truss by hand...

We were blessed with fantastic, entertaining neighbors (Christine from Chocolate and Steel, who I've been lucky enough to sit next to at a previous fair and new friends Papaver Vert and Jen Hewett. I gave my mom a pincushion/bowl from Papaver and I think it was my favorite gift--with the possible exception of Alex and my new membership to the Society for Industrial Archaeology--and if I had nieces instead of nephews I would have given them Jen's Michelle Obama paper doll book, so instead I bought one for myself.) And yet again Alex (migraine or no migraine)and Lucy (and all the vegan snacks she brought) pitched in while I recovered from sleep deprivation.
Many bay area friends, some from the grad school way-back machine, stopped by, including my two favorite twins, Aurora and Amalia, who I tried to teach some bookbinding skills:

In contrast to the warmth and fuzziness inside the fair, it was cold and rainy outside:

and I was so, so glad to have my brand new (some might say overkill but I say: just right!) very warm mega-parka along for the trip:

After the fair we headed east to Carson City to see Alex's mother. I was finally able to pitch in on the driving, and we made it over the pass *just* before they started enforcing chains. By the time we got to Nevada it was beautifully wintery, and we had a nice time staying in casinos in the snow.

We hit one of our favorite birding spots, between Carson and Reno, and it was pretty much frozen over. Not as many hawks as usual, but the whiteout made it easier to spot/enjoy the few that were out and frolicking in the snow.

and may I say yet again how happy I am with my new parka.

holiday mayhem!

2010-01-20T21:48:00.000-08:00

This was a super busy holiday season here at Krank Press. I was basically in produce-calendar-reprint-mode (and, er, wedding planning mode, but that is another story) all fall & was always a little behind the eight ball leading up to the two big holiday fairs. The first fair was Unique LA:

This photo is misleading: A) I was always so sleep deprived that I never really manned the booth myself, generally out-muscled and out-brain-powered by Alex and Aandrea "Sell! Sell! Sell!" Stang. and B) This photo makes the fair look a little lonely and gloomy--it was nothing of the sort! very cheerful and busy and we had an awfully good time meeting people and seeing familiar faces. But if you look carefully in the back, you can see what I was doing during most of the fair: collating! I even brought the wire-binding machine along, that's how last-minute this entire fall was.

glitter

2010-01-18T00:25:00.000-08:00

I was very honored, this holiday, to receive one of my sister-in-law Laura's new creations, a beet bag from her new enterprise GLITTERSWEET. It is one glittery bag (this photo doesn't really do the glitter justice) but also one sturdy bag! The intent was to use it for the farmer's market, but since I have been printing a lot more than I have been cooking lately, it has mostly been put to the test toting loads of packages to the post office, probably more than should have been stuffed into it, and still it looks and acts brand new.

Laura has been a sewing monster all fall (5 machines at last count?) and we have been commiserating/cheerleading about the insanity/joy of retail crafting. I was also lucky enough to print her cards. It is hard to match the glitter magic in paper form, so we did the next best thing--silver ink on bubblegum paper.

produce!

2009-09-09T23:35:00.000-07:00

the Big New Project this spring was the produce calendar. It was a request from my friend Gina, who wanted a calendar that let her know what was in season, and I took it one step further by including seasonal planting lists too. It required library trips, a close reading of the county agricultural extension website, and a lot of proofreading from friends and family. I finished the first round of calendars the *morning* of Renegade LA, and have since done a round of reprinting. I've also had several requests for bay area and northwest versions, so they are in the works (this one is for 'the Southland'--southern California). Each month has a linocut of a seasonal fruit or vegetable, and the calendar is perpetual, with space to keep notes by each date. I imagine it as a garden diary, to keep track of when you planted & harvested, but it could also be used as a birthday calendar...

big notebooks

2009-09-09T23:04:00.000-07:00

for the larger wire-bound notebooks (5.5 x 7), I designed two different patterns, in a variety of color combos, some of which:

small notebooks

2009-09-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

I started wire-binding blank books this year. The first 2 designs for small books (4.25 x 5.5), as modeled by Womack, were made from patterns of burrowing owls and Chantale's cloud drawings. I found some lovely heavyweight cardstock in lovely lovely colors and printed a variety pack of colors...

silver on pink:
silver on dark gray:

red on light gray:

silver on minty blue:

safety orange on white:

red on white:

and Chantale's clouds:

kitties

2009-09-09T22:29:00.001-07:00

whilst in japan last summer, we went to a toy museum in an old rice storehouse. i took photos of everything, that is until a rather insistent retiree/volunteer made me put my camera away (i'd missed the no photos sign apparently). amongst my illegal stash of photos were a number of traditional stuffed animal toys, made by silkscreening a drawing of the animal onto fabric, sewing into the shape and stuffing. my favorite might have been the cat, who i have since paid tribute to in the form of a small blank greeting card:

magic ink bombe!

2009-09-09T22:10:00.000-07:00

my friend dave is putting together a heroic project this year--he's asking 365 different artists to do a drawing on a specific day and submit it to him for inclusion in a perpetual daybook. i had one of the early days, jan 4, and set about painting a couple of my favorite packages from our 2008 trip to japan. dave chose the bombe, but i'm partial to the ink...

eaves

2009-09-09T21:52:00.001-07:00

I've been holding on to this image for a long time, so long that I don't remember where I found it, to give the source proper credit.

I finally translated the image into a project, by using the floral eave pattern (I feel like my Nana had a similar pattern on her kitchen cabinetry, but then again my memory tends to exaggerate...) as a border on sets of flat cards and labels.

seafoam on white:

and silver on pale yellow:

i like lists

2009-09-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

when i'm getting ready for a fair, or similar deadline, i start filling notebooks with list after list after list as a way of keeping my swimming brain sane. but then i look back at the dense notebooks and can't help but wonder if i was actually _in_sane. here are a couple of the more legible lists, one as i am getting started:

and then a bit later as things start to cook/unravel:

bird prints

2009-09-09T21:14:00.000-07:00

I printed a selection of the odd birds from the calendar, as limited edition prints on archival stock--the calendars come and go and I thought this was a nice way of being able to frame the birds individually beyond the calendar year...

more patterns

2009-09-09T20:47:00.001-07:00

I'm clearly on a pattern tip. This set was inspired by an outfit in a Japanese fashion mag, wherein all three patterns (zigzag, check and stripe) were represented in a single, lovely outfit. The last photo most closely represents the outfit in question, with the colors printed on a powder blue paper, much like the fabric in the ensemble. I printed three variations--I printed 6 different colors on white paper, I printed a set just with my new safety orange ink, and I printed the aforementioned set on powder blue. Because of the simplicity of the colors (only one color per card, real restraint for Krank Press) I can sell these a bit cheaper than my normal card sets...

new new new

2009-09-09T20:14:00.000-07:00

I had so many new things at Renegade this summer that I haven't even managed to get them up on etsy yet. And if you check my sketchbooks and lists and lists and more lists, you'd know that I only managed to print a small fraction of what I dreamt up (in fact, I should probably post some of those lists, as proof of my insanity).

Of the new items I think these little guys are my favorites--as inspired by the old stationery items I used to unearth at one of my favorite corners of the world, Bruce Variety on Bradley & Arlington, downtown Bethesda: blank gift tags in small coin envelopes printed with retro to/from arrows. These turned out so well I think I'll try doing more in this vein--not too too retro, just good basic stationery stuff.

clouds

2009-08-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

Chantale Doyle, from the Greatest Store in the High Desert, Mt. Fuji General Store, was kind enough to let me try turning some of her delicate cloud drawings into letterpress. She upped the ante by coming down to LA to print, and we decided to break the rules by adding new inks without removing the old ink from the press (gasp!). excellent results (though i wish i had taken better photos). Chantale packed these prints off to shows in Vancouver and Japan & I will be slowly using the same plates for cards and books & will post them to etsy as they appear...

updates!

2009-07-21T20:45:00.000-07:00

Alex (with a little help from Womack) ultra-kindly plugged away under the studio lights and photographed ALMOST all the new stuff from Renegade. and I am plugging away at updating the etsy site--I still have a ways to go, but I love how bright and cheerful everything looks in the shop. hooray for alex. I'll post the highlights here in the coming weeks, including the much-labored-over and miraculously-finished-on-time Produce Calendar, as well as the cloud prints I've been working on with the extremely patient & talented Chantale Doyle, owner of Mt. Fuji General Store.

post renegade post

2009-07-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

lucy and aandrea looking tough.

we had a great time at renegade, or at least thanks to team krank (lucy, aandrea, alex) *I* had a great time at renegade. lots of people came, many krank pressed items went home with customers, i met new-to-me & inspiring co-vendors (see: sycamore st press, tugboat printshop, erinzam books, 3 fish studios, orangyporangy, mincing mockingbird to name a few)...

and alex is kindly going to photo the new items so I can finally refresh the etsy site, very very soon.

much gratitude to my helpers and renegade generally for such a nice experience.

RENEGADE!

2009-05-18T17:03:00.001-07:00

Am thrilled to report that I will be vending at the 1st Annual Los Angeles Renegade Craft Fair. Renegade is the craft fair granddaddy, but until now was keeping to other locations (started in Chicago & have branched to Brooklyn and San Francisco). I'm looking forward to their posters as much as anything (always a cool drawing, always with a cool owl). And I only have seven weekends between now and then (though I'll be in Butte for one of them...)!! yikes.

new pattern incarnations

2009-04-29T21:26:00.000-07:00

new sets of tags from the pattern prints:

and now the book sets come in a Krank Press bag:

business kards

2009-04-29T18:28:00.001-07:00

job work

2009-04-29T18:21:00.001-07:00

I have been lost in custom invitation land and am just now returning my sights to krank press retail adventures. Of the invitations recently printed, this is the one I'm most smitten with (especially considering that this was the second draft, after I scrapped a less-fun first idea...):

calendars, past and future

2009-04-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

a sooper dooper belated link to krank press's mention in the NY Times moment blog way way back in January.

Am ruminating over which calendars will get reprinted for 2010, to join the new calendars currently in the pipeline. Alex has already compiled the 12 entries for a new LA history calendar--somehow he managed to find 12 equally giddy nuggets of history gold for round 2. And per Gina Kwon's *excellent* suggestion, I am also creating a southland-oriented seasonal food calendar (both what to grow in your yard and what to buy at the market). I think that one will be 'perpetual' (ie, not year specific)--we used to call them birthday calendars...

the bird calendar, in full

2009-01-23T20:19:00.000-08:00

Victim of my own success, I had to reprint this year's calendar to meet my friends-and-family needs, so while I collated them the other night, I finally photographed each page for blog posting purposes. I'm going to try and figure out how to make some of these into cards--I'd love to have more ways of using the bird cuts, esp the owls, raven, roadrunner, quail, kingfisher...

LA Times

2008-12-27T14:26:00.001-08:00

Unbeknownst to me, Krank Press's new bird calendar was featured in the LA Times today (I'm in Philadelphia right now, shrouded in fog). If anyone has found their way to this blog via the internets and is wondering if there are more calendars, there are indeed! I've reposted more calendars on Etsy and will keep an eye on the inventory to be sure they don't run out again.

the newest calendar

2008-11-23T21:44:00.001-08:00

This year's calendar is bird-topical--it was going to be a global "odd birds" compendium, but once we started researching we decided LA has at least 12 odd birds of its own. The full roster: the belted kingfisher, the surf scoter, the burrowing owl, the california quail, the brown pelican, the black-necked stilt, the black skimmer, the greater roadrunner, a show rooster, the common raven, the long-billed curlew and the eared grebe. I'm super happy with how it turned out, so much so that I will post more pics of the calendar when I have a chance to take them.

taxis of tokyo

2008-11-23T21:34:00.000-08:00

While standing outside of Itoya in Ginza, I decided I wanted to try printing a series of cards of the identical-but-for-their-color-coding 80's era taxis of Tokyo:

yard fauna card sets

2008-11-23T21:10:00.001-08:00

I printed a card set with 5 of the animals from the yard fauna calendar (the bushtit, the possum, the coyote, the kestral and the raccoon).

pattern sets

2008-11-23T20:33:00.000-08:00

I printed 5 patterns (polka dot, plaid, stripes, diamonds, and triangles) and turned them into cards:

gift tags:

and blank books:

new printed items pt.1

2008-11-23T20:24:00.000-08:00

happy holiday version of the thank you cards. super happy with how they came out:

bird tags:

and exclamation cards and tags:

felt club!

2008-11-21T17:06:00.001-08:00

the booth:

back in the real world

2008-11-21T16:36:00.000-08:00

I've been lost in Krafttown what with all my efforts to get ready for Felt Club, but now that the felt club has so successfully come and gone, I should be updating this here blog. I'll start with general felt club documentation, thanks to Alex and his camera, and follow with close ups/descriptions of the new stuff, which honest-to-god only managed to come to complete fruition thanks to the help of Mom, Dad, Alex and Aandrea...

the prep:

cards for Geoff McFetridge

2008-08-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

I just finished printing these cards for Geoff McFetridge--to accompany his (excellent) show at the Seattle Art Museum. totally thrilled to print stuff for Geoff + also totally happily surprised at how well the fine lines of his designs printed (see, particularly, man upside down on chair).

pink birdies

2008-08-29T08:34:00.000-07:00

I broke out my bushtit silkscreen + some of John's fluorescent pink ink (which, by the way, I discovered after the fact is NOT water soluble) to print on the little machine parts bags I have:

and on tags:

blank books

2008-08-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

some blank books I just made with my new German butcher's twine:

and a couple experiments with matchbook-style blank books, this time using my new safety orange library book repair tape:

on the lawn

2008-08-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

another recent linoleum-and-metal type (twentieth century!) invite:

four oh

2008-08-29T07:58:00.001-07:00

american gothic

2008-08-29T07:43:00.001-07:00

Mike provided me with a sketch of him + Jenee, which I old-time-ified, on account of their old-time Washington-slept-here wedding location. I also bought a perforation blade for the cutting board to make the rsvp cards. (We really did sit at one super long table at the wedding reception.)

blackberries

2008-08-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

Wedding invitations for Chad and Mary.
I invested in a font of stars from the M & H foundry, so as to be a little more Texan. I also found the digital equivalent of one of my favorite metal fonts (Alt Gothic #2) + used the Gocco printer for the envelope + rsvp.

cloverfield, pt 2

2008-08-29T00:27:00.000-07:00

some examples of endsheets I've printed for the Cloverfield Press books. For each book I print both the covers and the endsheets--I give the offset press the printed endsheets before the books are bound, so they are part of the binding and trimmed with the rest of the book. I've designed all of the endsheet patterns--generally a riff on the cover art...

1. inside the front cover of Ventura County:

2. the first endsheet I designed, for The Museum of Contemporary Art by Carol Treadwell. The cover has a lone stroller, which I morphed into a wallpaper:

3. the inside pattern for Hot Springs by Mary Rechner. The cover features a minivan.

4. the inside cover of Cubist Infant by Justus Ballard (based on cover art by Ann Faison):

cloverfield selections

2008-08-28T23:55:00.000-07:00

some selections from the Cloverfield Press oeuvre:

1. the press in the midst of printing the covers for Gentleman Reptile by Henry Baum.

and a close up of the boxcar base used for his cover:

2. the original cover for Laurence Dumortier's Ventura County (linoleum image; photopolymer type):

3. Haruki Murakami's Tony Takitani (cover art by Michiko Yao):

fiesta card

2008-08-28T23:50:00.001-07:00

another linoleum/metal type combo:

save the date

2008-08-28T23:42:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about making blank save the date cards with this old block I cut for Noah and Maggie's wedding:

greeting cards; tags

2008-08-28T23:23:00.000-07:00

thank you cards, celebrating that lovely sombra font.

happy birthday and thank you cards, two sizes, two color schemes, based on "HELLO MY NAME IS" stickers, contrasted with the unevenness of the metal type:

cards and tags based on the linoleum tiles i unearthed on the floor of the kitchen in the back house:

2008/2009 calendar

2008-08-28T22:54:00.000-07:00

I got this calendar out a wee bit late, so the dates stretch into 2009. (I'm also reprinting this for 2009). This calendar is a collabo with Alex--he did all the excellent research + all the excellent blurb writing. It is chock full of odd LA history gems + introduced me to both Tiny Broadwick and Georgeous George. all of the months follow:
(as with the previous year's calendar, the images are linoleum blocks I cut + the text is all hand-set)

2007 calendar

2008-08-28T22:39:00.000-07:00

Finally posting photos of the 2007 calendar, which I'm about to reprint for 2009. The theme is animals we've seen in our yard (or, sometimes, in our house), which is to say: the animals of Silver Lake...

invites for lotta

2008-08-28T22:27:00.000-07:00

Invites I printed for Lotta Jansdotter, for our friend Chris's wedding:

lou

2008-08-28T22:21:00.001-07:00

menu blanks for Lou:

more twentieth century bold

2008-08-28T22:12:00.000-07:00

a couple hand-set invites using the magic Twentieth Century Bold:

twentieth century, bold

2008-08-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

Mike zeroed in on the drawer of Twentieth Century Bold, 10 pt, for his business cards, and I have to agree: it makes a nice business card...

binding

2008-08-28T01:24:00.000-07:00

I'm teaching a bookmaking workshop at MOCA this winter + got these out to review my binding chops--this is the binding I learned while making these books. The top book is my brother's short story "Journalism" and the other book is a hardbound blank book (for, say, a wedding guest book...).

sombra

2008-08-28T01:20:00.000-07:00

business cards for Alex
i'm pretty happy with how these turned out--i really like the combo of the Cubana ("Sombra") font and the classic Stymie

patterns, part 3

2008-08-28T01:04:00.001-07:00

I'm very excited about this shirt. It's my first foray into the Built by Wendy patterns (of which I own three I think) and I give the pattern a solid thumbs up--well designed, any mistakes were my fault, etc. I wore this shirt all the time in Japan--the perfect top for hot + humid weather. The yellow fabric is some fine Italian shirting I sprang for...

I did make one adjustment--I almost forgot. The sleeves in the pattern are a little too wing-like for me so I put a couple darts in them to soften the angle...

patterns, part 2

2008-08-28T00:54:00.001-07:00

I also made this top from the McCall's smock pattern. It is made from Japanese tenegui 'towels'. Each towel is pretty narrow, thus the patchworky nature of the shirt. I'm trying to let the shirt grow on me--each print is amazing but put together: a bit more intense than i bargained for.

patterns, part 1

2008-08-28T00:40:00.000-07:00

I've rediscovered sewing with patterns and specifically sewing with vintage patterns. I made a linen smock dress from this pattern:

It fits + wears great with no adjustments. I've had the fabric for years--it is impossible to tell in these photos, but it is an irridescent blue purple linen--and this dress merited the wait. I also used a polka dot for the facing, which sadly never shows when worn...

red hat in a blue wrapper

2008-08-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

birthday wrapping for dilla

and the hat that was inside

bread!

2008-08-25T23:41:00.001-07:00

my first ever whole wheat loaf.
moist yumminess from a king arthur recipe.

recent sketchbook activity

2008-08-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

last xmas's manufacture

2008-08-25T22:19:00.001-07:00

catching up on some of the past year's craft projects:
a colored pencil bundle for jing

bird tree ornaments for everyone

the bushtit woodcut silkscreened on a shirt for dilla

a bib for jared

and pirate shirts for the nephews

back again

2008-08-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

i'm picking this blog up after a year in order to get some printed matter up on the web (marketing!) but thought i would start where i left off with some photographs, this time from our recent trip to japan.

2007-07-20T16:02:00.000-07:00

photos i took whilst in british columbian wonderland (treehouses, wild stawberries, lakes, ramen) two weeks ago:

2007-07-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

i've been meaning to post images from the 2007 calendar i printed... in the meanwhile, a photo i stumbled on of the collating process, on my Nana's beloved green victorian sofa:

2007-07-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

business cards for brigid!

2007-07-09T22:31:00.000-07:00

bra-themed invite part two: letterpress.

2007-06-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

bra-themed bbq shower invites, step 1: gocco!

2007-06-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

hastily made but desperately needed cushiony bags for fragile electronics:
#1 soft pouch for thrice-dropped-but-since-repaired camera, partially made from an obi anastasia brought back from japan.

and #2 a utilitarian laptop bag, after office peer pressure instructed that a muslin tote bag wasn't quite up to the job.

2007-06-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

another bib, in progress; fabric from bolt in portland or.

2007-06-01T22:27:00.000-07:00

dimly lit photos of bag made from etsuko fuyura fabric. (for dilla)

2007-06-01T22:23:00.000-07:00

jenee modelling reversable bib.
(made for august)

2007-05-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

i'll start with a backlog of recent manufacture.

#1: booties made for ewan. (pattern from purl)