Took a trip to Boston with the family this week. Really excited about all the inspiring design, applied art, folk art, and colonial era wallpaper in the new Art of the Americas wing.
At last, we have a WINNER for the Hello Lucky giveaway. Lucky Emily McConnell of Portland, Maine will receive $100 to spend on Hello Lucky stationery, such as these custom photo cards (or any of the other great stuff from the Hello Lucky shop!) Yay!! Thanks to everyone who’s been a part of this fun project and giveaway! and Congratulations Emily!!
Today is a very special day! Hello Lucky has just released their new custom Holiday card shop, and they are featuring five new designs by Morris & Essex, made especially for Hello Lucky.
These cards are pretty cool, because you can upload your own photo of yourself and your adorable family or pets or what-have-you, and your own personal greeting message. Your photo will be placed inside my lovely border, with a delightful holiday design on the flip side. So you get an adorable photo and a stylish seasonal greeting card, all in one.
This was really fun to work on and I am so incredibly honored to collaborate with the venerable Hello Lucky, whose fantastic stationery I have long admired.
So, in celebration of this exciting new collaboration, today I am teaming up with Hello Lucky to give away a $100 gift certificate to Hello Lucky, which one very lucky reader can use to buy anything from the marvelous Hello Lucky shop! There are a few ways enter for the giveaway:
•go to twitter and re-tweet this post
•go to the Morris & Essex facebook page and “Like” us!
•go to the Morris & Essex facebook page and “Like” today’s post about the Hello Lucky giveaway.
don’t forget to share the news with anyone else who’d love to win! There will be one entry for each re-tweet, one entry for each person who likes today’s facebook post, plus one entry for every new facebook fan. The winner will be announced here on my blog, and on the Morris & Essex facebook page, on Wednesday November 9th. Good luck!
I’ve been using this sporadically for a while, but just recently have gotten into checking in every day. I don’t know which is more fun, pinning things on all of my boards, or poring through all the awesome stuff everyone else has posted. I’m mostly just using it for visual inspiration but I love seeing other folks use it for collecting recipes, places to travel, plans and dreams. Fun stuff. Here’s me: www.pinterest.com/elizajanecurtis/
Hooray! I am SUPER excited about this news, because I have been a big fan of Galison Press for ever and ever! Last year they invited me to collaborate on a set of stationery products, using my designs and produced by Galison. Their products are always beautiful and I’m so so so thrilled that these awesome goodies are finally on store shelves nationwide! They’re also available from the Galison website.
The way we worked together was that they picked out their favorite designs from my website, and tweaked them a bit to fit their design formats, and they also asked me to generate some new design elements (such as the hand-written script on book spines and packaging). So it’s a little bit funny to see my familiar designs in a new and different format, but it was so much fun to do this, and the finished products look wonderful! I’m so thankful for this awesome experience and really excited that my designs are widely available, at a great price point, and finding their way into lots of new hands.
I’ve been working away on a new Thank You card design. I sketched it up on paper, then copied it into Illustrator to fine-tune, printed it out and traced it onto a block of linoleum which I carved up for printing. Next week I’m hoping to do a full edition on the letterpress, I’m thinking of a dark red ink. I will post finished photos when the time comes!
I made a set of nesting boxes for BCO craft swap project. I used some of my favorite patterns that I’ve designed lately, and printed them on colored papers which I used to cover the lids. Used chipboard under the printed papers for the tops, and used mat board for the bottoms. I cut strips of kraft paper and glued them over all seams, inside and out, for extra strength and neatness. The final product seems excessively sturdy. Hopefully the recipient will find them delightful and useful and durable.
All finished and ready to go! They are for sale in my etsy shop!
Here’s the letterpress valentine card:
this is the hand-carved linoleum block that I made and used to print the cards!
I started out with a plain old sheet of rubbery “linoleum” (it’s not truly linoleum, it’s a modern version that’s a little less brittle and easier to cut) and transferred my design onto it with pencil, then carved it up with special knives (which takes a long time and lots of care and focus!), then mounted the lino on a special wood block. My dad helped me make up a batch of these wood blocks a few months ago – they are made from nice hard, dry, maple which is an especially stable wood that shouldn’t warp or swell too much. Planed and sanded to a very exact height so it will fit in the letterpress. After the glue set, I took it over to Dunstan Press, where Mark printed up a big batch of these lovely valentine cards for me!
Here’s a cut-paper version of the same design:
working on a new valentine design today! I’m so excited. I hope I can get it done in time to sell for Valentine’s day – I’m afraid I’m cutting it a bit close :/ On Friday I worked up the design in Illustrator, inspired by the cut-paper-valentines that my mom and I always made together for each other, family, and all my classmates when I was in elementary school. I also just stumbled upon Hans Christian Andersen’s wonderful paper cuts, so that was on my mind while I was working on this too. Anyway, today I will transfer the finished design onto a linoleum plate and cut it out with lino-cut knives. Hopefully tomorrow I can drop it off for Mark to start printing on his letterpress!
I would like to note that it just happens today is the birthday of one of my best friends in the whole world! Happy Birthday EBD! Anyway, I came here to share a new card design! Here are some process photos – I started with a sketch and then transferred it to linoleum, mounted the linoleum on a special block of wood, and cut the design into the linoleum block:
here’s some test prints using the finished linoleum block:
aaaand here’s how the finished card turned out!
it’s up for sale in my Etsy shop now…
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