workday wednesdays: time to purge

wood type

among the many treasures that i recently purchased from mr. brandt was my first set of wood type… yipee! here’s one of my first prints pulled using the “new” vingtage type and the potter proof press… it’s a blind impression or “deboss” which means the print is made without using any ink. so cool, huh? shoot, i think so. i’ll be fiddling with my new letterpress toys this weekend… may you have an excellent and productive weekend as well!

workday wednesdays: type sale

last saturday the family and i drove to the platen press museum in zion, il again for a fun filled morning of shopping {letterpress shopping that is} at mr. paul aken’s annual type sale. my husband is thankful that i only came home with this

mommy mondays: my sister

{side note: alright, shame on me… i didn’t post anything for yesterday’s “etsy seller sundays”… but that’s because i was too occupied with what happened yesterday… read on}

for today’s mommy mondays post, i have to tell you a secret. ssshhh… lean in… come closer… now a little closer… yet even closer. ok. here it is… MY SISTER IS AWESOME! really. she is a super mom, a super wife, super creative, and super fabulous… and best of all, she will be providing penelope’s press with her awesome artwork! she likes to call herself my “ancillary staff” {a term used in the hospital setting}, but i like to call her my “freelance illustrator” {it sounds way better}. several penelope’s press products that will incorporate designs will be hand drawn illustrations that will be scanned, uploaded to the computer, turned into vector line art, manipulated, made into plates, and pressed, one by one, by a vintage printing press.

when i first started to dabble in letterpress, my sister was intrigued by the “oldness” of letterpress and thought it would be nice to, “have a piece of american history”. she thought it would be nice to have a hobby press for personal cards and stationery. which leads me to my excursion yesterday…

i packed the kids and the husband in the suv, loaded the vehicle with food, snacks, drinks, toys and movies, and drove, drove, drove to a nice gentleman’s home in rural illinois. there, i bought two different sizes of this…

when i thought everything was said and done, my eyes fell on something. underneath cobwebs, an enormous amount of dead ladybugs, and junk, i saw this…

super cute and the perfect size for my sister! so when this press, {i’ve named her quinn} is all cleaned up and rust free, she’ll be going to a good home!

goose, as in wayzgoose, not the feathered friend

last weekend was hectic. the good husband accompanied his wife and drove her 4 hours away, to stay only 3 hours, to drive back 4 hours on only 2 hours of sleep to the amalgamated printer’s association’s wayzgoose & 16th annual midwest and great norther printer’s fair (that’s a mouthful!) in mt. pleasant, iowa. i had no idea what wayzgoose even meant until a few minutes ago when i looked it up on wikipedia, meaning- Wayzgoose was at one time the name for an entertainment given by a master printer to his workmen each year on or about St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August). This marked the traditional end of summer and the point at which the season of working by candlelight began. Later, the word came to refer to the annual outing and dinner of the staff of a printing works or the printers on a newspaper.

on with my little road trip story.. so we awoke at 4am and drove through hours of a whole lot of this

when we arrived though, we saw plenty of neat things like this

and check out this paper cutter.. this is no fiskar’s brand paper cutter from hobby lobby

we saw recycled type being cast right in front of us by sky himself, joined by his wife johanna, the dynamic duo of skyline type foundry. i even bought some brand spankin new type and a border set from them

 i like their little note they had on display. i nudged my husband and whispered, “they should have one that says your husband instead of wife” haha. he didn’t think it was too funny.

we also saw this machine, i think it was used for printing braille

the coolest thing was the newspaper demonstration on the steam powered babcock press. how crazy is this?

after the paper is printed, it’s fed through this crazy contraption to get folded and the ends trimmed

we also saw some letterpress posters like this

and amid all the huge, industrial machinery, we also saw these cute collectible hand presses from paul aken’s massive collection that make up the platen press museum in zion, il

and after all of that, i just couldn’t leave empty handed! i of course had to purchase a few goodies…

-3 used type sets
-7 tubes of oil based ink
-2 new sets of type
-1 new border set
-3 new gauge pins
-a ton of old but never used borders
-and a husband with a greater appreciation for letterpress!

now how fabulous is that?! go wayzgoose.. can’t wait until next year!