currently in production

Rosemary's side of our shared work table.

We've been very busy over the past few weeks. We finished working on a custom order, we've had some houseguests and taken a few mini roadtrips. We've also been hard at work in the studio. 

L-R: new blocks in production, carving two of our Highland Park postcards, Highland Park and Silverlake postcards in production.

We've reworked a few old favorites, most notably our neon sign greeting cards. We'll be relaunching them soon! 

L-R: Robin carving out a reworked version of our Los Altos greeting card, Felix Chevrolet, proofing our newest blocks

We've also been working on a bunch of new designs, so we'll be coming out with new neighborhood postcards for Santa Monica, Culver City, Silverlake and Highland Park over the next few weeks! We'll also be launching two new sets of note cards, Some City Birds and Some More City Birds!

L-R: Some More City Birds note card blocks, Sun-Lake Drugs Silverlake postcard block, Some City Birds note card designs

We also found out that we were accepted to participate in this summer's Renegade craft fair at Los Angeles State Historic Park on July 20+21, hope to see you there!

We've been posting a lot of photos of our urban explorations and of our work process on Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter, why not follow us there too!
Rosemary+Robin

building our own bottle jack press

When we first started our printed cards, we used to print everything by hand. A little crazy we know, but we were just starting out and we were working with linoleum blocks. It was ok, because we weren't printing in very large quantities. 

Printing by hand using our fingers, a plastic "wooden" spoon and a barren.

That changed a few months ago. When we were getting ready to relaunch our press with our new name, we had to reprint all of our cards with our new name and logo printed on the back. We realized pretty quickly that we weren't going to be able to reprint all of our standing stock that we'd built up gradually by printing everything by hand. We weren't yet ready to invest in an actual press, mainly due to space restrictions but we needed something, and fast! We decided to build our own. 

L-R: Robin assembling the base, Robin threading the bolts through the top of the press, Rosemary tightening the hex nuts on the bolts, our friend Devin helping us cut down our bolts.

We looked up many different handmade presses and settled on a version of a bottle jack press using a 6-ton car jack with a few of our own modifications. We had help from some of our wonderful friends and family and managed to build it pretty quickly. 

L-R: Robin checking that everything is level, celebrating our success, our first iteration of the press.

We've made a few more modifications in the few months since we built the press, but overall, it's worked pretty well. It isn't the same as using a regular printing press, and large editions like the one we just finished working on definitely have their challenges, but overall we're pretty happy with it. 

The retrofitted press, our most recent iteration. Robin even painted our logo onto it!

At the very least, it will help us bridge the gap until we have the space for a traditional printing press setup. We've made some pretty cool new items that we've listed in the shop, why not come take a look at what we've been up to!

Rosemary+Robin

have you met our neighborhood postcards?

In a nod to the hyper-local, our neighborhood postcards allow you to share your special corner of the world with your friends and family. Our collection began in Los Angeles and launched with an Eastside and Westside set, but other cities and neighborhoods are in the works so stay tuned.

Images from the Eastside Los Angeles postcard set.

Each postcard measures 4.25” x 5.5” and is printed on Mohawk Vellum kraft paper in black block printing ink with a traditional postcard layout on the backside. Each set is comprised of 8 cards featuring four designs. The Eastside set has images from Highland Park, Silverlake, Hollywood and Koreatown. The Westside set has has images from Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Malibu and Culver City.

Images from the Westside Los Angeles postcard set.

We're already hard at work on the images we want to work with for the neighborhood sets for Santa Monica, Culver City, Hollywood and Koreatown. We've been having a lot of fun working on this project, we can't wait to spread the love to other cities and neighborhoods soon!

Rosemary+Robin