Christmas Productions - Complete

Everything is done! We were running into issues with the ink drying fast enough so we elected not to put a print on the reverse. My wife did a little bit of calligraphy on the backs instead and that's how they are going out. Most are already in the mail, plenty of time for Christmas.

I also finished all of the puzzles. I have cut 9 of these over the past month or so. Two will do service as "demo" puzzles, just something to have out on the table when we do a craft fair. The other seven are for family and are done in plenty of time to be wrapped without stressing over getting them done!

The two on the left are the prototypes, the six in the middle are for my family and the one on the right is for my wife's. I tried to select pictures that had some meaning for the recipient. The exception to that is the mountain shot. That's a bit more generic but its one of my favorite photographs so I guess it has meaning to me!

Holiday Work - Christmas Cards

It always seems to happen at this time of the year as my posts start to drop off quite a bit (not that this has been a stellar year for posting to the blog). The holidays increase our hobby workload tremendously as we like to hand make our Christmas cards and at least one or two of the Christmas gifts we hand out.

In light of that the first side of the Christmas cards has been started. I managed to rattle out the front of 24 cards. I need to probably need to do two more runs like that, likely in different colors (most like a red and possibly prussian blue)

The fly in the ointment is that this year we would like to do a print on the back as well. That means the fronts have to be completely dry before we do that and that we need to allow drying time for the back print as well. Nothing like adding a little more time to everything!

Here is the first run of cards with the dark green. Overall pretty happy with them. They are stacked in back to back pairs in the drying rack plus a couple of spares just hanging out in the back.

And this is how I get there. It starts with the jig which gives me a square corner that I can rest the printing block which is also tall enough to make sure the cardstock is square to the block. I use a piece of plastic to spread the ink on, pick it up the brayer and ink the block. Then the cardstock and I run an old wooden spoon on the back of the cardstock to apply enough pressure to transfer the image. Nothing to it!

This is the negative image of the back print. I'll either cut it by hand or get a least a helping hand with the laser. Never forget to reverse the image when you are cutting your printing block!

Its That Time of the Year - Christmas Productions

I knew it would be a long holiday season when I saw Christmas decorations co-mingling with the Halloween decorations at my local Lowes. Just a week later I was at Home Depot (better wood, better selection) and they were clearing out an area getting ready for Christmas and just down the way was another huge display of Halloween decorations. Do we really need a Christmas season that lasts for 3 1/2 months?

But what it did remind me to do was get busy on the Christmas cards for this year as that is just a time consuming process and this holiday season looks to be a busy one for us. Fortunately I'm way ahead of the game because we ended up not producing cards last year so my printing block is already to go.

I did a few test prints to see what they were going to look like and if there was anything glaring that I might need to correct. Last year I did the initial work on my little Neje laser, unfortunately it didn't burn deep enough but it was good start to the carving and saved me a lot of work. All I had to do was get out the ink, paper, a brayer and the block and I was set to go. You can see the results below.

My basic, and primitive, printing setup. Just a some wood thrown together (and made as square as possible) to hold the block in place and hold the paper in place and square to the block. I use a piece of plastic to spread ink out on.

The first two prints. The first one I did is on the right. I did rub it down well enough to get a good imprint. The second one was better and it showed where I had some high points that needed to be cut down.

After a bit of minor work I like this print. All the high spots have been knocked down. The "a" in Christmas is a bit deformed but there is nothing I can do at this point to fix that. This first color I'm trying out is Phthalo Green. I will be trying Prussian Blue and Ultramarine next and then we will decide what to use. I have a Napthol Red, but I'm not wild about it.